The Town That Food Saved by Ben Hewitt
Click to find at a library near you!
Based on the title, I expected a different story than the one told here. In fact, I was expecting to learn about a happy community with a well established local food culture showing the rest of us how it could be done. What I wasn’t expecting was the author asking really tough questions about the feasibility of local food systems. Can communities in a country that prides itself on independence (really, the illusion of independence) embrace the interdependence necessary to build and maintain a local food system? What defines a local system? Is it truly local if the people who live nearby can’t afford to buy it? How do communities react when the media pays attention only to those who have just recently discovered local food, while overlooking those who’ve been eating and producing it their entire lives? The author’s pragmatism challenged my local-food passion throughout the story and I was starting to worry that building alternatives to the current industrial food system is all a pipe dream. The good news is…I’m not going to tell. You’ll have to read the book.
Slow Food USA recently reviewed this book as well. Check out their comments here. Guest review kindly submitted by Shelley of Local Food Northern Nevada.
