Angi Fuller Wildt: Communicating the virtues of local foods

Olives grow in the U.S. too!

As both a co-owner of a small-scale sustainable agricultural business and a public historian, the work that I do synthesizes public history with actively producing and marketing locally and regionally produced foods. In addition to cultivating, growing and selling mushrooms, herbs and produce to local restaurants and at our Columbia, South Carolina All-Local Farmers' Market, our business sells olive oil made from olives grown in southeast Georgia. One aspect of our marketing entails informing our customers about the 18th and 19th century exportation of olive oil as a commodity from coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Most people are quite surprised that olives can be cultivated in the southeast United States. Sharing the history allows them to have a sense of connection to the roots of the region. Many customers appreciate that the product isn’t shipped across the country or an ocean and that it supports economies close to home.

Another educational opportunity takes us into university classrooms and local venues to engage in dialogues about the ecological and economic benefits of growing and consuming heritage varieties of produce and other foods grown organically and locally.
As members of Slow Food, we work with a likeminded group of people in a growing movement to share our knowledge about the benefits of locally-produced, sustainable foodways with the community. This summer we participated in the Tasty Tomato Festival, a co-production of our Columbia Slow Food chapter and another organization, Sustainable Midlands. The event draws over 1,500 people and is held at an in-town sustainable farm called City Roots. The location itself invites attendees to see the possibilities of a different kind of urban renewal. The owners transformed three acres of a formerly vacant lot lies between the edge of a working class neighborhood and a light industrial area into a working farm. An information tent at the event featured Faces of Local Food with photographs and quotes by producers and customers. Another tent offered a wide variety of locally grown tomatoes for attendees to sample. Nearby, children lobbed commercially-grown tomatoes at a target.

Many of these efforts “preach to the choir,” however, and we occasionally struggle to quickly and easily explain in just a few sentences why local is better. Getting the message across that higher production costs equate to higher prices can be difficult in the minute that we might have with a potential customer. Those who are already aware of the environmental and societal costs created by government-subsidized food grown with hormones and chemicals, harvested by low-wage labor and shipped across long distances don’t need to be convinced of the value of buying locally-produced food. The founders of the Tasty Tomato Festival had the right idea. Featuring flavorful ripe red tomatoes alongside their bland, mealy, pink, mass-produced hothouse tomato counterparts makes it easy to see and taste the difference in quality. Making that connection, at a fun event with local food, local musicians, and a range of related activities gets the message across in a more palatable way than a few dry facts can. I would like to explore more ways to effectively communicate the virtues of locally grown foods to as many community members as possible. One idea to reach a more diverse audience includes partnering on events with other local organizations and groups whose members we may not typically encounter at the farmers’ market. Programs that connect participants to the history and the present of their communities create a sense of belonging. In addition to sparking an appreciation for quality, inclusive events can invoke a sense of civic responsibility, stewardship, and pride of place.

~ Angi Fuller Wildt