As a boy, I walked down the streets of my town and saw dozens of people out and about. Though Eau Claire, Michigan has never had a population greater than 550 residents, the village was vibrant, bustling with activities every day.
We had a hardware store, a Ford dealership; clothier; pharmacy; two restaurants; five gas stations; a lumber company; a locally owned bank (when’s the last time you saw one of those?); three grocery stores; a doctor’s office; a small department store; a bait and tackle shop; a weekly newspaper, and even a candy store. These were all locally owned and operated businesses, and they thrived because of one overlying business sector—Agriculture. Agriculture… as in food.
In those days, we truly had a community-based food system, and if the local farmers were picking strawberries, you could buy them at the local grocers. Ditto for peaches and every other produce item that was grown throughout our region. We had access to locally-produced fresh and processed food, and we bought that food, and we ate it.
But like many other Berrien County, Michigan communities, we lost our food system. Big corporations bought out the local processing plants and then shut them down. Oligopolies formed in the drug business, banking; retail grocer sector; hardware; lumber, and home improvement sectors, and before we knew it, life had changed in Eau Claire, Michigan. Today, one may buy a tan on Main Street, but not a local peach….
Moreover, during the past fifteen years, I have not seen a single Michigan strawberry on the shelves of a Walmart Super Center, or Kroger, or Safeway. Not a single one. Little wonder strawberry production in Berrien County has declined over 99% since 1969.
I have no doubt my town is like many towns that lost their local food system, and then lost their local economies. In S.W. Michigan, I know there is an inextricable link between food and farming, and vibrant communities. And I know that if we’re to revitalize my town, and similar towns, we need to get back to the community-based food system that helped make it vibrant and viable in the first place.
Now I’ve got to drive twenty miles or more to buy a pair of trousers, or a washing machine, visit my doctor, or get a prescription filled.
But you know what? If I could buy community-based food, I’d make the effort and pay the extra cost. In fact, as I posted a couple of weeks ago, I proved to myself that I would make the drive and spend the extra cash for better food. But it seems a real shame I can’t get the same food closer to home.
That’s one major reason Rebecca and I are writing this Blog; we want better access to healthier food. And we think we might help make that goal a reality.
Because within the current globalized, industrialized, oligopolized, and commoditized food industry, providing choices for what we eat depends upon local initiatives. Ones designed to provide access to the best food available. Food that is days, even weeks, fresher. Food that is higher in nutrition because it is fresher and harvested at the proper maturity. Food that tastes better; strawberries with natural sugars and juice; stone fruit that are picked when they’re ripe, not two weeks before they’re ripe; apples that are allowed to develop flavor before they’re picked; and food that is produced and distributed in ways that can be sustained for generations to come.
That’s our ticket to food sovereignty, and that’s why we’re Blogging.
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