Here’s a slightly nuanced story in the Washington Post about a DC restaurant called Founding Farmers (lovely name!) that claims it’s all about “sustainable” food. Turns out they rushed into print a little too soon on that score however, considering the amount of quality control they still had to learn. Oops.
See ‘Green’ cuisine not always as ordered
I’m not going to outline the story here – it’s worth a read because it gives a pretty balanced weighing of the pros and cons of the restaurant’s operation compared with its menu claims. It’s hard not to sympathize a little with Founding Farmers – and the comments to the article from readers frequently say things like, why pick on people trying to do some good? But the message here is that the devil is in the details, and we have to pay attention to the details if we want to survive.
Because, as the story shows, it can be a treacherous thing just trying to eat healthy. And by the way, “farmwashing” doesn’t appear in the story once, although it should. It’s like greenwashing, the telling of fibs by companies trying to ride the sustainability wagon without actually being, well, sustainable.
(You get it already, but if you want more collateral, in my old town of Santa Fe they can explain farmwashing to you and make it entertaining.)
In the end, it comes down to if you can believe the claims made by anyone or anything that tells you a product is organic, or sustainably grown, or healthy – or even free of poison (which might have been easier in a less polluted, earlier age).
Local Food Grid takes as a working rule of thumb that the entire food chain is poisoned. This is the basic ground zero that we have to start from. Everything is poison – except, what might not be?
How about food from a farmer I know personally? Grown in soil I’ve seen. From animals pastured on grass I’ve watched grow. How about food offered to me by people who look me in the eye, and have a vested interest in my not getting sick?
As a concept it’s very simple. Just a matter of building the local infrastructure, and the local economy woven in, snug against all storms.
