Growing the Good (Slow) Food Revolution
From a very young age Jim Embry has been working to fight against social
injustice and support those in difficulty. The Lexington Sustainable Communities
Network, which he founded, is a hub of ideas, activities and projects: school
gardens, food education, support programs for people who have been subjected to
violence or are recovering from an addiction. We can never stop thanking Jim and
those people who, like him, have made the Terra Madre dream
possible.
You have been an activist involved in social justice from an early
age, was the question of food production/consumption already an important part
of the movement in the 1970's or is this something that has happened more
recently? In your opinion are the social justice and food movements
one?
For many of us activists food production/consumption (food justice)
was linked very closely to the social justice and peace movements of the 60’s
and 70’s. In 1968 while attending Dr. King’s funeral I met labor activist
Green who offered me a summer job working in Brooklyn, NY and it was there that
I was first introduced to the concept of what we now call food justice. In 1971
I met the Vietnam War protestor and comedian, Dick Gregory who further
illuminated for me the politics of food and also inspired me to adopt a
vegetarian diet as a political, spiritual, health and ecological statement.
During the 70’s some 300 natural food co-ops were created and I was a founding
member of the Good Foods
Co-op here in Lexington which had a focus even back then on local, organic
and healthy foods along with community gardening. But certainly in the past 20
years there has been an enormous global awakening to the detrimental effect that
our industrial agriculture system and the fast food culture are having on the
health of people and the planet. Yes in my view the social justice and
food movements are linked at the hip. While the movement to create sustainable
communities encompasses all of the social justice movements, a local and healthy
food system is the foundation for a sustainable community. However the
prevailing Newtonian worldview leads us to think of Mother Earth as a bunch of
unrelated mechanical parts to be exploited and abused. But I ascribe to quantum
or systems thinking which teaches us that we are all inter-related,
interdependent and all made from the same source.
How did
you come across Slow Food and Terra Madre and what compelled you to
join?
In the spring of 2008 I received information from a friend
about the Terra Madre gathering and its connection to Slow Food. After reading
the on-line information, I immediately joined and fell in love because the
concept and principles were absolutely consistent with my values and work. A few
weeks later I applied and was later selected to attend Terra Madre later in October. My love and support for
the Slow Food movement was deeply amplified by my experience at Terra Madre.
Can you tell
us more about the Lexington Sustainable Communities Network? How has the
localLexington
community responded to your initiatives?
Sustainable Communities Network formed in 2006 is like a
spider web of relationships that extend locally, nationally, internationally and
maybe one day inter-galactically! Since we consider a local food system as the
foundation of a sustainable community, we work with all sectors of the food
system in re-creating sustainable connections with food that encompass
political, ecological, social and spiritual dimensions. Over the past 6 years we
have: hosted an annual local food summit, trained 300+ teachers to organize
school
gardens, inspired the creation of 40+ community gardens, sponsored a monthly
food film series, provided workshops and retreats for the faith community, given
45+ talks a year on Slow Food, Terra Madre and food justice, wrote articles or
given interviews to various media, helped plan several statewide and
national conferences on food security, served on the local government Climate
Action Plan Team, and guided efforts to create a food policy council.
Since we all come
through women, since women provide the best first local food with breast milk and since women are
the primary providers of food nutrition and education we have developed very
substantial projects with women’s groups such as: community gardens at
Chrysalis House, the program for women healing from drug and alcohol addiction,
gardens and nutrition classes at Family Care Center, the
high school program for pregnant and parenting teenagers, garden and farm
visioning for the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program, the program for women
healing from physical and emotional spouse abuse, and a children’s garden for
the One Parent Scholar House, the program for single parents attending post
secondary school.
We have received tremendous support , involvement and requests for our
services from every sector of the local community. Through our initiatives we
work closely with K-12 schools, farmers, women’s programs, refugee groups, the
judicial system, faith groups, local and state governments, food co-ops,
universities, various local media and of course local producers! We have
received numerous recognitions and awards, do about 45 community presentations
Do you think the number of
so-called "co-producers" in the US is growing? Are people paying more attention
to the story behind the food they eat?
Yes! Without a doubt
the number of co-producers is growing exponentially every year throughout the
US. Our friend Wendell Berry said years ago «eating is an agricultural act» and many more people now
understand and are manifesting the meaning of that profound statement.
Over the past 20 years we have witnessed a 50 per cent increase in farmers
markets and CSAs, expansion of farm to cafeteria initiatives at K-12 schools, hospitals , universities, and even jails, local and organic foods available in many more
groceries and restaurants demonstrating that Americans are expressing our desire
for quality food that is produced in harmony with the environment and local
cultures.
Setting up a vegetable garden can seem like such
a simple action, but in practice it can have a very strong impact. Why is it
such a powerful instrument in your opinion?
Last century the
mantra was that we all needed to be computer literate but in this century
because of the
ecological crisis and the human disconnect from nature we must now insure that
we are all eco-literateworking and playing in a garden children before they can
read or write can learn eco-literacy, not to fear bugs and bees, how to work
together cooperatively and they learn how to become agents of change in their
community. In the garden we get to touch the soil, the sacred medium that we are all made from and learn
systems
thinking. In my view beginning children working and playing in a garden is
the most important foundational activity to teach sustainable living,
citizenship, activism and sacred Earth connections.
What are you taking
with you to Turin this October and what are you hoping to bring
back?
Using extensive community outreach and education , I will take the love and activism from myself
and my community to Turin. Before my previous trips in 2008 and 2010 I used various forms of media , gave numerous presentations and set up photo exhibits to inform my local
community that I was a delegate to Terra Madre and inviting them to” travel with
me”. This was my way of “taking the community with me” which I will do again
this year. After another fabulous Terra Madre experience in October, I will
bring back the love, the creativity, and the activism of the people that I will
meet as well as the many memorable tastes of food in the Salone! This experience
will be shared with my community through presentations, photo exhibits, articles
and simple conversations about my own excited exclamations of the powerful Slow Food each year and serve on numerous
commissions and planning teams. with a sense of sacred relationship with the
Earth. By communities around the
world!
