Tyler French: Attending to other tables as well as our own

I have just finished writing the copy for Nourish SC, a traveling exhibit of eight panels addressing community food security in my home state of South Carolina. I hope for the exhibit to become a rallying call for members of the local food movement to expand their efforts on the social equity front, which has been ignored in favor of the environmental and economic fronts of the movement. In creating the content for the exhibit, I interviewed 13 individuals involved in either the local food movement or increasing food security, including a local farmer, a USDA official, a food bank COO, social work and public health professors, and a board member of United Way of the Midlands.

I immediately encountered tension between the spoken and the actualized goals of the local food movement.

Rebecca Bush: Farm families beyond “Farmer Bob”

Picture an American farmer.  Strong, independent, face well-worn with creases caused by worries about weather and money and the future - the image isn't too hard to conjure.  Dodge used this familiarity to great effect with its 2013 Super Bowl commercial, one of the most talked-about ads of the game:

So based on the majority of that lengthy ode to farmers of America, what demographic boxes can we check off?  Almost always, our imaginary farmer is a native-born white man over the age of 40, probably living in the Midwest, Great Plains, or certain areas of the South.  This may be an easy and effective advertising trope, but it doesn't begin to capture the complete story of agriculture and food production in the United States, either historically or today.

In the American South in particular, agriculture and food is wrapped up in a messy racial relations stew, one that touches on the history of 300 years of unequal labor and land ownership determined by skin color.

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.