The Power of Local
A Blurb, if You Will
When confronted with the possibility to design my own food study, there was only one certainty I had: I wanted to involve my family in my project. In class, I was surprised to learn how little a connection my diet had to the land I’ve lived on my entire life, so, it felt an easy choice to try and see if my family members (all nearly life-long if not life-long Hoosiers) felt the same way. My initial guess was that there would be a generational pattern with my Grandma most connected to the land and my cousin least connected. Although this is objectively true, their stories made for a much less cut-and-dry answer.
How I Arrived at My Research Question
Indiana is a bit of a paradox; we are the tenth largest farming state and much of our land is made up of farms, however, we are also a site of mass-production, mono-crop culture, and industrialization. Since the 1800s, we have been the site of “major ‘packing towns’ like Terre haute, Madison, Lafayette, and Crawfordsville” (King, 1963, p. 9).
I was curious to know whether or not people are aware of the food that grows on the land around them when most of our farms aren’t actually growing food for Hoosiers.
In fact, since 1987, the number of farms that exceed 2,000 acres, a.k.a. industrial productions, has increased over 80% (INContext, 2010).
First Generation Hoosier
My first interviewee was my Grandma. Born in Bellingham, WA she has lived in Washington, Texas, Colorado, and Indiana. She moved to Indiana at 20 when she married my Grandfather and has lived here since. Her interview was interesting because she almost proved the opposite of my hypothesis. What made her most aware of the local cuisine of Indiana was the fact that she hadn’t lived here her whole life. She said that when she came here from Washington, “[She] had never had food like pork and beans, cornbread, gravy, none of that.” The local food scene was especially obvious to her because when she moved here, she took over my Grandfather’s family business and owned and operated Thompson Grocery Store in Kytesville, IN. She moved to a farm community, had her own chickens and pigs, got game meat from neighbors, grew her own produce in a large garden, and cooked nearly every meal for herself, her husband, and her three kids. Though her current diet does not look anything like this, she still carries with her all the memories of adjusting to the Indiana food scene. A similar pattern is seen in my Mom’s interview. The biggest difference in her diet now is the lack of self-sustainability, mostly because she went from living very rurally to living in Indianapolis. When she was raising her family, she grew her own food fresh in the Spring and Summer and then canned and preserved for the Fall and Winter.
Second Generation Hoosier
“Pride in place is a powerful impulse” (Bruce 2002, p. 2).
I chose to select this clip of my Mom’s interview and pair it with this quote from Bruce Stein’s State of the Union report because I think together they perfectly exemplify much of my Mom’s emotional relationship to food. Throughout her interview, it was clear that growing up, she was very aware of her local biology. As I said earlier, she was raised on a farm, ate local meat and produce, and was a part of the family grocery store. The clip at the beginning of this section was a storytelling that I specifically requested when conducting her interview. I asked her to tell her most vivid food memory because I have never forgotten this story about a tomato since she told it to me as a young girl. Personally, I yearn for a rich garden from which I can eat a perfectly ripe and organic tomato like an apple. An interesting pattern emerged during this interview as well: as my Mom has grown up, her relationship to her local biology has gone back and forth, like a teeter totter. Growing up, she was very aware of it and ate almost exclusively home-grown food, save for powdered milk, bread, and other staple foods. As she went into young adulthood and moved from a rural town to a small-town/suburb, she grew completely separated from her local biology and ate mostly casseroles and frozen meals with the occasional meal out at a restaurant. Now, as a middle-aged adult (and at a higher socioeconomic status than ever), she is back to eating more fresh and local foods, only there is no element of self-sustainability. Rather, she is changing how she sources her food, like going to Whole Foods and buying mostly produce instead of going to Kroger or Walmart and making a casserole.
Third Generation Hoosier
“However, the market has failed many Hoosiers, and seems unable to respond to the burgeoning demand for local food…remarkable in the nation’s tenth-largest farm state” (Meter 2012, p. 4).
For my cousin’s interview, I selected this clip and this quote from Ken Meter’s 2012 report, “Hoosier Farmer? Emergent Food Systems in Indiana.” In this clip, my cousin is talking about what her ideal diet would look and her aspirations for the future. Throughout our conversation, we had been talking about how we have inherited a love of nature and fresh food, likely because of how our parents grew up. When asked what her ideal relationship would look like, her answer very much reflected this, however, she is unable to make it happen currently. She talked about how it seems more difficult to buy locally and source her food responsibly, when in reality it likely isn’t that much more difficult than going to the store or a fast food restaurant (which she frequently does). I would suggest otherwise, for similar reasons that Ken Meter talks about. I think currently, our food system in America is so overwhelming in terms of choice, time, and money that it becomes easier and easier to just resort to food that is labeled fast, convenient, and tasty. This is in no small part because of how aggressively options like supermarket chains and fast or fast-casual dining are advertised to consumers. This interview in particular was most revealing about how our current day food system overwhelms any consumer trying to become more aware of their local biology, for when you do not start out either operating or living on your own farm, as my Grandma and Mom did, it feels totally overwhelming to try and reach that lifestyle or one that looks more like it.
“…our current day food system overwhelms any consumer trying to become more aware of their local biology…when you do not start out either operating or living on your own farm…it feels totally overwhelming to try and reach that lifestyle…”
Conclusion and Reflection
In the end, it is fair to say that with each generation, the connection to the land grows smaller. It also true, however, that at their current stages in life, all three of my family members were roughly the same degree of dependent or aware of their local biology when it came to their diets. This made it clear to me that the question of how close we are to our local biology will never have a fixed answer because, simply, we as humans conduct lives that look different every day, so our diets will never be permanent. The biggest factors of diet that emerged from my interviews were time, location, and money, not generation. If I could leave you with one idea, it would be that researching people is never going to be cut and dry and we as anthropologists will have much stronger and more compassionate careers if we approach ethnography with open minds, no expectations, and a willingness to see our contributors as full people who will likely throw some curveballs our way.
Sources and Recommended Readings
Bruce A. Stein. 2002. States of the Union: Ranking America’s Biodiversity. Arlington, Virginia: NatureServe.
Gray, Henry. “Physiography Division of Indiana.” Indiana Geological & Water Survey, Indiana University, 1 Feb. 2016.
“The Importance of Indiana Agriculture.” INContext, vol. 11, no. 3, Indiana University Kelly School of Business, May. 2010.
King, George Davis. “The Industrialization of Indiana, 1860–1920.” Proquest Dissertations Publishing, Indiana University, University Microfilms, Inc., 1963.
Meter, Ken. “Hoosier Farmer? Emergent Food Systems in Indiana.” Crossroads Resource Center, Indiana State Department of Health, 18 Jan. 2012.
Nabhan, Gary Paul. Coming Home to Eat: the Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Norton, 2009.
