Panel Addresses Pros, Cons of Buying Homegrown Foods

Let's hear it for the good 'ol United States of Obliviousness. Or perhaps, let's not. Yes, let's definitely not if you're talking to Darwin Kelsey, Executive Director of the Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy. He'll emphatically tell you to reserve that allegiance for a more cognizant, more engaged citizenry—the United States of Awareness, perhaps—especially when it comes to knowing how and where our food is produced.

Kelsey and Hawken graduates Doug Katz '88, owner of the restaurant Fire Food and Drink in Shaker Square, and Peter Jacobson '81, former CEO of Dream Waffles, composed a guest panel of food experts for a recent assembly about the importance of buying homegrown foods.

"I always think of myself as living in the USO – the United States of Obliviousness," Kelsey said. "We are oblivious to the consequences of what we eat.

"...You know the old saying 'I eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away,' well that might have been true back in the 40s and 50s, but [today] you gotta eat three to get the same nutrition [as back then]."

Kelsey envisions a system of local food distribution that originates with local farmers, reducing travel time from field to plate, preserving nutrients, pumping dollars in the the economy and making for a healthier Northeast Ohio. His Countryside Conservancy is a small non-profit in the Cuyahoga Valley that is working to see that dream become a reality.

Katz, a chef, sees the flavorful benefits of creating such a system that keeps consumers connected with the community of local farmers and less so with big food manufacturers.

"Food tastes better when you know the person who's grown or you know where it came from," he said. "My goal is to teach people where their food comes from.

"I think today there’s such a disconnect with where a chicken breast comes from or even if it's a real animal. If you meet a farmer and find out that they're growing zucchini and you buy that zucchini and you take it home and sauté it, it's so much better than if you bought it at a store."

But for all of the benefits of having such a network in place, problems still exist.

"Just because it's local doesn't always mean it's better," said Jacobson.

He said that he recently had an experience with a local distributor that disturbed him so that he and his family will no longer eat at any place that gets food from the company.

"In support of bigger food manufacturers, they have greater liability, which forces them to be more conscientious about how they produce, they also have better resources and better knowledge of how to produce food...From that perspective, you can generally expect that the food—though chances are it’s highly processed—is safe."

Katz agrees that there are infrastructure problems, but that they can be remedied through the collective efforts of local chefs and farmers working to create efficient, safe channels for food distribution and production. He said that buying locally is a way of giving consumers the power to choose what they buy and when they buy it as opposed to being forced to purchase what is available at the grocery store no matter the quality.

For that to happen, Kelsey said consumers must begin to educate themselves about the social, environmental, social and physical "costs" attached to the convenient and inexpensive foods on local store shelves.

"We need to get beyond our obliviousness to the consequences of our diet and we need to care about that," he said.