Food is Fundamental

Ryan Albritton
Jul 10, 2017 · 4 min read

Several years ago, I walked into my backyard and started digging. I didn’t really have much of a plan, I just knew that I needed to pour my energy into something that I could see positive results from—and what better way to do that than growing food! I didn’t realize it at the time, but that small garden plot was just the beginning of a new life that put food—growing it, cooking it, eating it—at the center. It was really a new angle for my lifelong obsession of trying to understand how we got so far away from our humanity as a culture and figuring out ways to get back to that. My first angle on that was art, music specifically, as a vehicle for building real community. As important and real as that is, it wasn’t quite the fundamental level I was seeking, so I kept wandering. Food is that foundation that I was looking for. Agriculture prompted civilization, so to understand our culture is to understand food. To understand food, is growing it, cooking it, and eating it.

I’ve been seeking out new ways of working within the local food system, on food access work with the St. Louis Food Policy Coalition, on writing about food through 4 Courses In, as well as talking to some chefs about helping to tell their stories, and in each case the power that food has to bring people together is truly compelling. A couple years ago, while working on a startup that really grew out of my gardening experience, I wrote the following words on our blog. This really speaks to the philosophy of not only that venture, but how I have come to view life and the hope that I have for our cities and culture.

Originally published on Sprouthood.com on February 9, 2015:

Cities are modern man’s forests. Dense and diverse and constantly changing — innovation is oxygen. The city as a forest supports its members, is a functioning and sustainable whole greater than the sum of its parts. It inspires us to be a part of that greater whole — to work together for a common goal. Our best neighborhoods largely function this way, to the benefit of each individual within, but this isn’t universal among all neighborhoods. There are places where the individual is lost. Like megafarms, cities are efficient, productive, and huge, and many [people] depend on them for survival. Endless fields of corn and wheat give our comparatively endless rows of houses their daily bread. These fields, unlike the forest, aren’t self-sustaining and would fail without significant inputs. They are dense and productive, but not diverse and sustainable.

Density, diversity, productivity, and sustainability together describe the form and function of a successful ecosystem. It is more difficult to apply them broadly across a city or a megafarm, though an argument could be made for each individually in certain cases. Successful neighborhoods are dense, diverse and productive though few are sustainable. These neighborhoods, and by extension the cities that contain them, hold our greatest hope for a sustainable civilization. This outcome is not only possible but probable. Through the eyes of an urban farmer, we can understand why.

With density, diversity, and productivity in place there is a bridge to sustainability that simply involves some compost, some seeds, and some community. We can learn from the example of the forest and from the natural farmer that to cultivate sustainability, the health of the whole system must be considered and that is tied to the diversity of life within. Plants, insects, animals and humans can occupy a similar space and thrive off of each other in a balanced system. Gardeners and urban farmers are tapping into this truth — that many of our neighborhoods are one step away from the forest. It will take work, but by cultivating diversity and systemic health, we can add sustainability to our current list of strengths.

Of course, there are many parallels to draw from that, especially if you’ve been following this blog. We often push for short-term solutions or band-aids to problems rather than getting at the soil. That’s no different than spraying chemicals on a field of corn, which only furthers the systemic decline of the field. As I wrote in the excerpt above, there is a lot to learn from the example of farming or gardening for all of us. No matter which angle we find ourselves coming from, we can ask ourselves whether we’re just spraying chemicals from above, or actually building the soil below.

My hands are definitely in the dirt and from what I can tell there aren’t nearly enough other hands down here to grow the real, sustainable future that we all need. If your hands are already dirty cultivating the soil of our future and you need help telling your story, I’d love to help! If your hands aren’t quite in the dirt yet but you’d like them to be, I’d love to help you too! Get in touch, I’d love to grow food [and/or a future] with you!

ryan at sprouthood dot com

Ryan Albritton

Written by

Writing my way out one day at a time. Stories about food, rants about culture, Anti-Racism, some poetry too.

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