I haven't had a chance to weigh in on the issues raised by Andrew Martin's recent NYT feature on the food movement. Despite the giddiness that comes with hearing that "a prominent food industry lobbyist... said he was amazed at how many members of Congress were carrying copies of 'The Omnivore's Dilemma,'" some felt that the article, with its focus on Alice Waters -- who becomes more controversial by the day -- and Michael Pollan as food movement "leaders," was a hit piece. Personally, I think of it as a reality check.

Obamafoodorama is on to something in seeing that the real response to the Martin piece was the article in the WaPo on Food Democracy Now's founder Dave Murphy (who goes entirely unmentioned in the NYT article). As Ob Fo points out:

Ob Fo zeroes in on Murphy's policy chops as providing the crucial Fifth Element that will bring the food movement into its own. But though Murphy's policy expertise is crucial to his recent success and a key to bringing about reform, I think his importance goes beyond his grasp of the interlocking, interdisciplinary nature of food policy. In a nutshell, he understands politics.

And that's the missing piece. Forgive me a bit of oversimplification when I say that up until now the media has portrayed the food movement as a fad -- a bourgeois leftover from the '60s counterculture. This may be why every article on alternative or organic or local food or food policy must by law use the word "hippie" at least once -- even if it's in the negative (as in "believe it or not, these particular foodies aren't hippies.") It's a movement that has been perceived to offer a choice to those who are in a position to make it, i.e. affluent, educated consumers. Here's how, Waters or Pollan tell us, you can opt out of the industrial food system. It was nothing more than a media phenomenon, a self-help -- rather than a social -- movement.

And why wouldn't it be seen that way? "Foodies" certainly haven't historically been players in the halls of power -- more like a sideshow. As Ezra Klein has observed, it's perfectly rational for politicians to cater exclusively to the needs of Big Ag -- there aren't any political advantages to opposing them. In that way, the food movement is the opposite of the environmental movement. In most parts of the country, simply branding a politician as anti-environmentalist is an effective political bludgeon. The environmental movement can bring serious political, legal and monetary firepower to bear when required. The food movement, to this point, has been almost totally lacking in those abilities. And that's why people like Dave Murphy hold the key.

Or rather why his 90,000 strong mailing list holds the key. As Murphy (and hopefully others like him) are able to mobilize people to directly pressure members of Congress, the movement can begin to gain traction with the congressional committees that have held agricultural reform hostage lo these many years.

Yet, from the perspective of a "movement," it's still early in the game. It may indeed be generous to posit, as Michael Pollan did in the NYT article, that the food movement now is where environmentalism was in the '70s. By that point, after all, the Sierra Club was already over seventy years old and had been lobbying legislators and combating developers since the Roosevelt administration - Teddy Roosevelt, that is. Unfortunately, we don't have another 70 years to wait. Dave, if you're listening, you've got your work cut out for you.

But the tipping point, if in fact we've reached it, may be in the broadening of the food movement base that has occurred over the last decade. As the sustainable ag folks come together with the fair trade folks come together with the international development folks come together with the climate change folks come together with the public health folks come together with the nutrition folks come together with the food safety folks, the movement begins to approach critical mass. Now that these previously disconnected groups have looked around and realized that they're all playing on the same field, an economy of scale, social movement-style, kicks in.

The great failing of the NYT article is the way it seemed to minimize this phenomenon. As Tom Philpott wrote, Martin almost totally ignored, for example, the issue of class except to conclude, as Philpott put it, that "fresh, local, and organic food must be a niche market for the well-off and the food-obsessed." Martin didn't address any of the evidence here and abroad of the viability of programs to bring such food to working class and low-income people. Nor, for that matter, did Martin mention anything having to do with international trade, fair or otherwise, and its role in the food system's unsustainability. Even health and nutrition got shortchanged as they had to play second-fiddle to the fight over ag subsidies, which Martin suggests is "the heart of the movement."

Indeed, in Martin's eyes, sustainable agriculture has as yet failed to "prove" that it can feed a growing world. Martin let the head of the National Corn Growers Association dismiss organic agriculture with the wave of a hand without even attempting to acknowledge the body of research that suggests it can indeed feed us all. At the same time, Martin observed that:

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if those numbers were reversed, I'd bet dollars to donuts that sustainable ag could feed us all just fine. My gut instinct is that the momentum really is shifting. Of course, we'll know the compost worm has truly turned when the chief executive of the National Corn Growers Association is the one forced to explain how they can possibly feed us all in the coming time of climate disruption, peak oil and depleted soil. Well? I'm waiting ...

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Did you know Alice Waters invented the slow food movement!?

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Slow Food Nation -- that grand, sprawling culinary event that seemed to permeate San Francisco over Labor Day weekend -- has passed. Now we can ask: What was it? A brazen display of foodie elitism, as some critics charge? A transformative moment in an ongoing effort to overthrow the industrial food system, as its organizers sometimes hinted?

Slow Food Nation's Taste Pavilion.

Photo: Eater SF

First, the grandeur of the gathering -- organized by Slow Food USA -- has to be acknowledged. Slow Food Nation's Taste Pavilion, dramatically located at San Francisco's bay-side Fort Mason, deserves a place in the history of U.S. food and design. Ensconced in a vast airplane hangar-like space, the pavilion offered rigorously "curated" -- and stunning -- selections of cheese, pickles, charcuterie, coffee, olive oil, liquor, chocolate, beer, fish, and wine. The interior design matched the quality of the food, each station conjured up gorgeously out of reused and reusable materials like wooden pallets and burlap coffee-bean bags and representing the vision of some of the Bay Area's most creative architects. Meanwhile, the outdoor Slow on the Go market at the Civic Center presented a kind of perfect-world food court: huaraches as good as any I've had in Mexico City alongside fantastic coffee, terrific muffletas, killer ice cream, and much more.

The intellectual fodder on offer wasn't bad, either. The event's "Food for Thought" speaker series featured strictly A-list talent: Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Raj Patel, and more.

The free zone at Slow Food Nation.

Photo: dreamo

Further, more than any conference I've ever attended, the event exuded sheer ambition. In addition to the glories described above, Slow Food Nation included a lovingly designed and cultivated "Victory Garden," a farmers market that embodied the sheer abundance of San Francisco's celebrated foodshed, and, tucked into the teeming food court, a soapbox from which anyone who wanted could harangue the crowd. These features, I think, were meant to form a populist, accessible counterpoint to the pricy Taste Pavilion, food court, and star-studded panels.

Yet for all the activity and display of culinary, intellectual, and design skill, the question of what Slow Food Nation actually was hung over the event. At points, event leaders seemed to treat Slow Food itself, the international organization that formed in Italy in 1986 to protest a McDonald's in central Rome, as the embodiment of the movement to challenge industrial food. From there, it was a short jump to presenting Slow Food Nation as a kind of watershed moment in the U.S. food movement -- the point in time when public desire and political will for a new food system coalesced.

The olive oil station in the pavilion.

Photo: Andy Delcambre

Meanwhile, on the ground, Bay Area residents grumbled about marginalization and elitism. When I first glanced at the prices for various functions, I thought they seemed reasonable, given that typical conferences run upwards of several hundred bucks for blanket admission. But then again, as a journalist, I rarely have to pay for conferences I attend. If I were a local resident without a professional tie to the event, would I have balked at $65 for the Taste Pavilion, or $25 to attend the flagship panel featuring Berry, Shiva, Pollan, Schlosser, Carlo Petrini, Alice Waters, and Corby Kummer? I guess it would depend on how tight my finances were. And that's the point. While the public spaces at the Civic Center drew a reasonably diverse crowd, the for-pay events seemed uniformly white and well-off.

In the end, I think the vast ambition behind Slow Food Nation formed its weak point. By striving to embody and represent an entire movement -- from "artisinal" food culture to urban agriculture -- the event came off like a dreamer with his head in the clouds, disconnected from the struggle in the streets.

No one quite embodied that attitude like Alice Waters, doyenne of Slow Food USA, iconic figure of the sustainable-agriculture movement since she started her Chez Panisse restaurant in the early 1970s, and Slow Food Nation's intellectual author. I adore Waters' cooking style and respect her work as a pioneering restaurateur and school-lunch reformer; as a political spokesperson, she leaves me scratching my head. Asked at a pre-event press conference about the accessibility issue, Waters gave a riff about the Victory Garden and how it "represents our belief that good, clean, and fair food should be accessible to everyone all the time."

The Victory Garden.

Photo: In Praise of Sardines

Really? Beautiful as it is, the Victory Garden represents tremendous political, cultural, and financial resources. Slow Food Nation convinced the City of San Francisco to allow the garden to be installed on city land, got a prestigious landscape architecture firm involved in its design, and tapped a professional gardening company to help put it together. There's nothing at all wrong with any of this, but Waters seems blind to her own considerable power -- and unaware that other actors in the sustainable-food movement wield much less. And here's the kicker: The Victory Garden is due to be demolished in November; the arrangement with the city is only temporary. The Victory Garden serves as a mighty symbol for the potential of urban public space to be both beautiful and highly productive; as a symbol of accessibility to "good, clean, and fair food," it's a bit of a farce.

But none of this negates the achievements of Slow Food USA or its flagship event. To become the relevant organization that Slow Food USA leaders seem genuinely intent on creating, the group may merely need to (of all things) slow down. Across the county, people of all kinds are challenging industrial food and working to create a more sustainable, just, and, yes, delicious food system. Rather than striving to be the movement around food, Slow Food USA might do better to consider itself part of a much broader and diverse movement.

Brahm Ahmadi.

Brahm Ahmadi, executive director of People's Grocery in West Oakland, crystallized this idea in a recent (pre-event) post on his blog. Slow Food is "currently distracted by its own self-important belief that it should be a big tent for lots of people, rather than simply being an equal member of a much bigger movement or coalition in which the movement itself is the big tent," he wrote.

Instead, Ahmadi argued, the group should "form coalitions in which Slow Food acts as an ally" to groups seeking to create socially just and sustainable food systems in low-income areas. For Ahmadi, that means not trying to speak for such efforts, but rather "leveraging its political and social influence to open doors and generate resources that other groups do not have access to."

Slow Food Nation chose not to highlight the debate around the question of elitism and the food movement at its flagship Food for Thought series. But it did give Ahmadi a forum at its Changemaker Day forum -- weirdly, an invitation-only event. Uninvited, I essentially snuck into Ahmadi's panel on "Reframing the Slow Food Conversation to Support Food Justice."

There, Ahmadi gave a salient example of his problem with Slow Food. Grassroots groups working in the Bay Area's low-income sections like his own People's Grocery had watched in awe and astonishment as Slow Food Nation and its impressive physical footprint took shape, Ahmadi said. The Victory Garden and the Taste Pavilion would be erected and dismantled in the span of a few months, representing tremendous efforts of top designers and artisans, to speak nothing of political muscle and financial resources. Meanwhile, groups like People's Grocery struggle and wrangle for years to get a truck to deliver fresh food in West Oakland.

Josh Viertel.

Photo: Russ Walker

Joining Ahmadi on the panel was Josh Viertel, recently named president of Slow Food USA. I found Viertel's answer to Ahmadi extremely encouraging. Rather than react defensively, Viertel encouraged the audience to read Ahmadi's blog post. Then he admitted that Slow Food USA has a communication problem with low-income communities. He noted the group's well-publicized effort to save heritage turkeys from extinction -- a victory for biodiversity in our rapidly homogenizing food chain -- but acknowledged the absurdity of touting such a victory in low-income communities where people will soon be choosing between buying enough food and paying the heating bill. Viertel seemed determined that Slow Food USA not "suck all the air out of the room" as the sustainable-food movement goes forward.

Viertel may seem an odd choice to rescue Slow Food from its elitist reputation. The group plucked him out of the leafy confines of New Haven, Conn., where he lead the Yale Sustainable Food Project. But broadening Slow Food's focus is precisely his task. By any standard, "good, clean, and fair" food represents no more than 3 percent of food sold in the United States. To really challenge the status quo, the sustainable-food movement needs to expand its base dramatically -- and Slow Food USA, with its considerable cultural and political stature, can be a constructive force in that effort.

Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser, a longtime Slow Food USA insider who was prominently featured at the Labor Day weekend event, is already providing an example. At forum after forum at Slow Food Nation, Schlosser drove home a key point: The millions of people who work at vegetable farms, meatpacking plants, and restaurants -- the largest group of employees in the United States -- are ruthlessly exploited and need to be included in any meaningful sustainable-food movement. And he stacked his own Food for Thought session not with celebrated authors, but rather with labor-movement leaders.

I heard Schlosser say off-stage that his single-minded focus on labor made him feel like a "turd in a punchbowl" at Slow Food Nation. In reality, such use of cultural capital is a torch lighting a path toward a truly just and sustainable food system.

Video interviews with Eric Schlosser, Brahm Ahmadi, and Josh Viertel will be coming to Gristmill soon.

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Savor our list of eco-conscious chefs, then dish on your own favorites in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Alice Waters, Chez Panisse, Berkeley, Calif., U.S.
Thirty years ago, the words "imported from France" signified the height of status and taste on U.S. restaurant menus. Today, the phrases "locally grown" and "organic" have taken over that function (naming the actual farm earns extra points). For that transformation, we largely have Berkeley restaurateur Alice Waters to thank. Founded in 1971 by Waters and a hedonistic band of hippie-bohemians, Chez Panisse quickly established itself as a temple to European farmhouse-style cooking: simple techniques applied to spectacularly fresh and lovingly grown ingredients. But Waters has done much more than inspire high-end chefs nationwide to become "foragers" of the best things growing in their "foodsheds" -- or provide incomparable food for those who can afford the restaurant's $85 prix fixe menu. By challenging the dreadful U.S. school-lunch system, she has also worked hard to make healthy, sustainably grown food a reality for all citizens of the Fast Food Nation. Her innovative Edible Schoolyard program in a Berkeley middle school has emerged as a model worldwide for how healthy, organically grown food can be a tool to enrich kids' minds even as it nourishes their bodies.

Dan Barber, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Pocantico Hills, N.Y., U.S.
Of all the U.S. chefs rushing down -- and extending -- the path blazed by Alice Waters, Dan Barber may be the most important. When he opened Blue Hill Restaurant in Manhattan's Greenwich Village in 2000, he quickly became as famous for his fanatically sourced ingredients as for his inventive cooking. He hauled in much of his restaurant's produce from his family's farm in the Berkshire region of western Massachusetts, and bought the rest at Union Square Greenmarket, where the curly-haired chef became a fixture. In 2004, he began living the dream of every chef who sees cooking as an expression of the surrounding countryside: he opened a restaurant in the middle of a diversified organic farm. Located 30 miles up the Hudson River from New York City, Blue Hill at Stone Barns is the centerpiece of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, an 80-acre educational farm situated on an old estate owned by the Rockefeller family. Barber transforms the pristine produce of that farm into some of the nation's most celebrated cuisine. And like Alice Waters, Barber isn't content to merely cook glorious food for the well-heeled. He's also a leading voice in the effort to reform U.S. farm policy, which, he argues, is currently rigged in favor of environmentally destructive industrial agriculture.

Alain Passard, L'Arpège, Paris, France
For years, Alain Passard had been classed among the world's greatest chefs. His Paris restaurant, L'Arpège, had held a coveted three-star rating from Michelin since 1996, and he had won global fame for his celebrated run in Japan's Iron Chef competition. But in 2001, Passard shocked the culinary world by abruptly pulling meat from his menu. "I was struggling to have a creative relationship with a corpse, a dead animal!" he would later explain. While his ban on animal flesh isn't total -- he still uses some fish and poultry -- he has shifted his creative energies fully to vegetables. As he moves deeper into what he calls a new cuisine vegetale, Passard has turned to growing his own vegetables on his permaculture garden 120 miles southwest of Paris. He hauls the pristine produce into Paris daily by high-speed train. And the European culinary establishment, which initially recoiled from Passard's new direction, has returned in force. L'Arpège has held on to its third Michelin star -- and reservations are as hard as ever to come by.

Fergus Henderson, St. John Restaurant, London, U.K.
If Passard startled the culinary world by renouncing meat, London chef Fergus Henderson turned it on its head by embracing animal flesh in its entirety. His logic goes like this: If you're going to eat animals, it's wasteful to focus simply on the center cuts: chops, steaks, breasts. Instead, meat eaters must embrace the "whole beast" -- the title of his celebrated cookbook -- including what's known as the nasty bits: heart, tongue, spleen, etc. In the 1990s, when London chefs were rescuing their city's culinary reputation by looking to southern Europe for inspiration, Henderson was doing stripped-down, sublime versions of homely British classics, leaning heavily on offal -- always from humanely raised and slaughtered animals. His "nose-to-tail" ethic has sparked a trend in the United States. Not only are many chefs insisting on using only locally raised, pastured meat, but they're also educating their clientele on what Henderson has called the "set of delights, textural and flavorsome, that lie beyond the fillet."

Chris Cosentino, Incanto, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.
In a sense, Cosentino can be thought of as the love child of Alice Waters and Fergus Henderson. Cosentino runs Incanto's kitchen as a showcase for the wares of Northern California's farmers, as you would expect from someone who counts Chez Panisse on his resume. And he's also probably the No. 1 U.S. proponent of "nose-to-tail" eating -- he's so committed to the idea that he writes a blog called Offal Good. (A recent post offered a recipe for duck testicles -- a dish which, Cosentino boasts, "a growing number of guests are ordering ... and really enjoying.") Incanto also sparked a trend among Bay Area restaurants to stop selling highly profitable but energy-sucking bottled water. Incanto now offers house-purified still and sparkling water to guests at no charge.

Jamie Oliver, Fifteen, London, U.K.
Jamie Oliver, television's "Naked Chef," can cut a frivolous figure, with his boyish looks and slangy style. Yet he may be the world's most effective chef-activist. For years, he has used his considerable celebrity to harangue the British government to improve its school-lunch program, which for decades has relied heavily on cheap processed food. In 2005, he used a reality TV show set in a Dickensian public-school cafeteria to shame the government into boosting the amount spent on school lunches by more than $500 million per year. And he's not done. Just last year, Oliver issued a manifesto [PDF] declaring that the government's efforts at improving lunches still fall well short -- and giving specific policy recommendations for improvement. In addition to demanding healthy meals prepared from scratch for all students, Oliver also wants schools to buy direct from local, preferably organic, farmers.

Andrea Reusing, Lantern, Chapel Hill, N.C., U.S.
Operating far from the New York/San Francisco media glare, Andrea Reusing has quietly made herself into a model for the citizen-chef. In her off hours, she works tirelessly to promote the produce of central North Carolina's bustling sustainable-agriculture scene. She chairs Slow Food Triangle's convivium, which essentially exists to promote the area's small organic farms. And finally, in the kitchen of Lantern, Reusing takes the best of what her farmer friends grow and transforms it into extraordinary and rigorous Pan-Asian food -- which has put Lantern and the farmers who supply it on the national culinary map.

Corrado Assenza, Caffé Sicilia, Noto, Sicily, Italy
In a listing of the globe's greenest chefs, it may seem odd to include a man who toils at what is essentially a Sicilian espresso bar. Yet Caffé Sicilia, situated in the beautifully preserved baroque town of Noto, is no ordinary espresso bar. Wander there for an afternoon shot, and prepare to be dazzled by the wares of Corrado Assenza, a fourth-generation café owner whom many consider Italy's greatest pastry chef. But Assenza's wizardry with gelato, panna cotta, and other delights of the Italian dessert table aren't what put him on this list. Rather, it's his insistence on using the best ingredients he can find from nearby farms. Sicily boasts some of Italy's most productive farmland, but its best produce is often shipped throughout Europe, increasingly leaving its citizens to get by on processed food. Assenza is at the forefront of a movement to reclaim Sicily's culinary produce for its citizens -- and promote organic agriculture in the process.

Tod Murphy, Farmers Diner, Quechee, Vt., U.S.
At an unassuming diner in small-town Vermont, Tod Murphy is running what might be the greenest restaurant in the United States. The idea is elegant and deceptively simple: take products from nearby farms, use them to create straightforward diner dishes like burgers and milkshakes, and sell them at a price accessible to most of the community's residents -- including its farmers. While buying direct from nearby farmers is certainly more expensive than tapping global distribution chains, Murphy hopes to make a small profit by achieving high volume -- the opposite of Chez Panisse's boutique approach. Murphy figures that for the local-food trend to truly deliver on its environmental and social promises, it will have to be broadly accessible. "Local good food shouldn't just be a rich person's item ... It should be for everybody," he recently told The Boston Globe. And Farmers Diner has emerged as a closely watched experiment on whether that ideal can become reality.

Ted Walter, Passion Fish, Pacific Grove, Calif., U.S.
Perhaps no issue links food and environment quite like the state of the oceans. Relentlessly growing human demand for fish is placing severe strains on aquatic ecosystems. If present fishing trends continue, the journal Science warns, marine life faces widespread collapse by 2048. Ted Walter, chef-owner of Passion Fish, stands at the forefront of a growing movement by restaurateurs to educate the public about sustainable seafood. Echoing the Worldwatch Institute, Walter argues that smart harvesting can actually strengthen global fish stocks. And in a bold move for a restaurant renowned for its seafood, Passion Fish recently announced it will only serve fish not in danger of extinction. Given that restaurants account for 70 percent of fish consumed in the U.S., it would make a big impact if Walter's stance started a trend.

Paulo Martins, Lá em Casa, Belém, Brazil
Despite years of support from do-gooding celebrities, Brazil's Amazon rainforest still needs all the help it can get. Demand for European and U.S. biofuel is surging, giving farmers incentive to rip into the Amazon to plant soybeans for biodiesel production. One way to save the rainforest from the plow -- to convince the world of its value -- is to sustainably harvest the fruits of its vast biodiversity. That's the strategy of Paulo Martins, who has been using exotic produce to create a global stir at his restaurant, Lá em Casa, in the heart of the rainforest. Martins leans heavily on the region's 1,500 species of freshwater fish and 1,000 species of fruit to create a cuisine that's igniting the imaginations of chefs from São Paulo to Barcelona. Martins openly acknowledges his debt to indigenous cooking styles that dominated in the region until colonization in the 16th century -- and still flourish in pockets today. By flaunting the culinary delights of his region's flora and fauna, Martins hopes to drive home the point that the Amazon region -- perhaps the world's greatest natural carbon sink -- has far more important reasons for existence than serving as a mere source of fuel for European and U.S. cars.

David Kinch, Manresa, Los Gatos, Calif., U.S.
Sourcing seasonal, organic vegetables from nearby farms has become standard in Northern California. David Kinch of Manresa, located in Silicon Valley, is taking the revolution started by Alice Waters one step further. He's collaborating directly with Love Apple Farm in the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains to custom-grow vegetables. Going beyond organic, Kinch and his farmer-collaborator Cynthia Sandberg grow heirloom tomatoes and other delights with biodynamic techniques. In the process, he's turning Manresa into one of the world's most celebrated restaurants.

Ferran Adrià, El Bulli, Roses, Spain
A leading proponent of the "molecular gastronomy" movement, Ferran Adrià probably ranks as the globe's greatest chef, based on his wildly innovative cuisine. But peel away the mad-genius exterior, and you'll find a cook deeply devoted to his surrounding foodscape -- Spain's Costa Brava. In his cooking manifesto, Adrià declares that "preference is given to vegetables and seafood ... in recent years, red meat and large cuts of poultry have been very sparingly used." And the care with which he chooses the fruits of local farmers and fishers has become legendary. Along with Allain Passard and other European chefs, Adrià launched Vive las Verduras (Long Live Vegetables) in 2007, a group devoted to wedding haute cuisine with sustainable vegetable farming.

Peter Hoffman, Savoy, New York, N.Y., U.S.
Enter Manhattan's Union Square Greenmarket in the early morning, and you'll likely trip over a chef from one of the city's top restaurants. Fifteen years ago, though, most chefs sourced their produce from fancy distributors, who hauled in perfect-looking ingredients from hundreds of miles away. Not Peter Hoffman of Savoy. Since starting his much-loved Soho restaurant in 1990, Hoffman has been a familiar figure among the stalls, stuffing his dramatically oversized bicycle basket with the flavorsome produce of New York City's surrounding foodshed. And his commitment to sustainably produced local food doesn't end in the kitchen -- Hoffman served on the advisory board of the Union Square Greenmarket for 15 years, and has also been executive director of the Chef's Collaborative, which aims to build a more sustainable food supply.

Mari Fujii, Kamakura, Japan
In Japan as in the West, consumers have become accustomed to all manner of seasonal anomalies -- strawberries in winter, butternut squashes in spring. But the Buddhist tradition of shojin cuisine rejects that dubious bounty on the theory that the health of our bodies and our surroundings alike depends on eating with the seasons. In the seaside town of Kamakura, near Tokyo, chef Mari Fujii has established herself as one of the foremost practitioners of shojin cooking. At the cooking school she runs with her husband, a Buddhist monk, Fujii teaches the simple classic dishes that can be created with wild greens, seaweed, tofu, and whatever produce nearby farmers are harvesting. Classic shojin has become quite popular in Japan -- and could be the next craze in Western Japanese restaurants.

Frank Stitt, Highlands Bar & Grill, Birmingham, Ala., U.S.
Probably the most accomplished chef in the American South, Stitt honed his chops at Chez Panisse, and now transforms Alabama's bounty into a refined fusion of southern U.S. and southern French.

Michel Nischan, Dressing Room, Westport, Conn., U.S.
Newman's own chef Nischan convinced the blue-eyed actor to turn his new restaurant into a high-profile temple to the produce of nearby farms.

Tory Miller, L'Etoile, Madison, Wis., U.S.
Madison's famed farmers' market has no greater advertisement than the menu at L'Etoile, where Miller churns out French fare with a Midwestern accent.

Christine Kim, Green Zebra, Chicago, Ill., U.S.
In a neighborhood restaurant in Chicago, chef de cuisine Kim applies wildly inventive techniques to top-quality local produce, resulting in what might be the nation's most dazzling vegetarian fare.

Michel Bras, Restaurant Bras, Laguiole, France
Considered one of the world's most skilled chefs, Bras is also a quiet but fierce defender of biodiversity in France's Aubrac region, from whose farms he's said to use more than 300 kinds of vegetables.

Tom Philpott contributed to this list.

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Restaurants, schools tap into local water supplies

You've heard of eating locally, but the latest fad may be drinking locally. Some restaurants and schools are starting to serve filtered tap water instead of bottled water, citing the eco-impacts of packaging and shipping a product that's already available right thar in the kitchen. But it seems that pushing pints of Perrier is such a moneymaker that only some restaurants, mostly snooty ones, can afford to quit; cutting-edgers include Alice Waters' Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and Mario Batali's Del Posto in New York. "Serving tap water is a great idea that we'd all love to be able to do, but it's not going to happen all at once," says one Manhattan restaurateur. Rockin' lunch lady Ann Cooper led Berkeley's schools to make the switch, and experts say it just makes sense. "The rationale for buying bottled water is a fantasy that has a destructive downside," says Gina Solomon of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "These companies are marketing an illusion of environmental purity."

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Led by celebri-chef Alice Waters, some 200 chefs in 33 states are calling on Congress to protect river habitats and deprioritize hydroelectric dams that cramp Northwest salmon's style. "Wild salmon is one of the unique, authentic heritage foods of the Pacific Northwest," reads a letter that the cooking coalition presented to legislators yesterday. "It represents perhaps our country's last great wild meal." The "Vote With Your Fork" campaign hopes to focus attention -- both public and congressional -- on the controversial dams that have gummed up the Northwest's Klamath and Snake rivers, and on Alaska's Bristol Bay, where a proposed humongous gold and copper mine threatens a plentiful fishery. Because when it comes to salmon, the nation's best chefs turn up their noses at antibiotic-ridden, pellet-eating, oft-parasite-infested farmed fish. Besides, as Waters says, "Eating wild salmon can connect you in a beautiful way to the sea." We couldn't have said it beautifuler.

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Of all the crimes against nature Thanksgiving inspires -- SUVs clogging the highways, planes shuttling fliers around the country, factory farms churning out millions of frozen turkeys -- the most grievous may be culinary. First, the above-mentioned turkeys typically taste like sawdust; cranberry "sauce," a gelatinous goo that ominously retains the shape of the can it slipped out of, doesn't help much. The standard vegetarian response -- a factory-shaped soybean log -- may be a case of the cure trumping the disease in terms of sheer horror.

What, then, must you do, Grist reader? Here are three options for minimizing the environmental, and banishing the aesthetic, depredations of our fall holiday. (As for the infamous dysfunctional-family aspect of Thanksgiving, we recommend spiking the hot cider with St. John's wort.)

Real cranberries aren't cylindrical.

For a certain kind of green cooking enthusiast, the first question before embarking on any convivial feast is: What would Alice Waters do? Peering upon us from her Berkeley perch, the sustainable-food movement's classy earth mother exhorts us to find the freshest, most delicious local ingredients and prepare them simply, with traditional techniques that let the ingredients shine.

Dame Waters would surely remind us that Thanksgiving has always been a celebration of the fall harvest. So it's a perfect time to scout local farms for goods: pastured turkeys, winter squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, hearty greens like kale and collards, apples and pears. If you're in New England, the Northwest, or the Upper Midwest, you can probably find fresh cranberries. Get thee to the farmers' market, to the nearby food co-op that makes a point of buying local!

Try to get as many heirloom varieties as possible, but don't go overboard. Faced with the choice of a heritage-breed turkey shipped in from a distant state or a free-range, non-heritage bird from the farm up the road, take the latter.

Eat Wild can help you find pastured turkeys in your area, while Local Harvest will put you in touch with all manner of farms.

As for recipes, here is a nice spread from the excellent (and very Church of Alice) food magazine Fine Cooking. As for wine, if you can't go local, go biodynamic. Somewhere, Alice Waters will be smiling.

You revere Alice Waters and find her plea for eating local compelling. Yet, isn't it all a bit earnest -- and done? Can one really handle another roasted turkey -- even if it's cooked perfectly? Here is your manifesto.

By all means, scour the farmers' market for ingredients -- but who wants to let a bunch of Puritans dominate how we think of our only food-centered holiday? Rather than seek guidance from dour 17th century WASPs, even if filtered through Waters' sensuous aesthetic, I direct your gaze across the Atlantic, to Spain's Costa Brava, where lurks the deranged genius Ferran Adria.

This is the guy who turns stuff like scallops and asparagus into foam, who once served a chicken curry in which the chicken was liquid and the curry was solid. Granted, his latest cookbook would be a pricey impulse buy for this meal, but you can harness his spirit. (His website features a few highly descriptive articles about his style; and here are some freebie recipes.)

Astonish your guests by turning the turkey into a gelatin and roasting the cranberries. That big bag of collards? Blanch them, puree them up with some whole milk, strain, season, and then give them a whirl under the cappuccino maker's wand. Voila! Collard foam.

Every which way but juice.

To go vegan or vegetarian in style, please don't submit to the dominant culture by mimicking it with an atrocious and non-local tofu log. (Let's be serious; those soybeans were probably grown on land in Brazil that was until recently pristine savanna.) You could, of course, merely adapt Church of Alice or Brave Hedonist recipes to remove taboo ingredients. But I have a more radical, and less time-consuming, idea.

Truly stick it to the man by staging a fast. Now's your chance to try the "cleanse" that fellow in yoga -- the one with the beatific grin and the thunderous "om" -- has been babbling about. Instead of blowing a bunch of cash on groceries, buy a decent juicer and a big bag of organic carrots (you're excused in this case for not buying local; few organic farms outside of California's industrial-size ones can supply the sheer bulk of carrots you'll need).

It's the perfect statement to lay on your Butterball-cooking mother: "Sorry mom, I can't make it to your consumption-fest. I'm fasting."

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A-tisket, a-tasket, an organic produce
basket.

Photo: USDA.

Organic food has hit the big time. The Whole Foods Market chain, the largest natural-foods retailer in the world, boasts 145 stores throughout North America; its leading competitor, Wild Oats, has 101 stores in 25 states and Canada. Last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture put in place a set of national standards for organic food, smoothing the way for organic processors who buy ingredients from multiple states. Organic products -- fresh produce, frozen pizzas, and everything in between -- are now part of a multi-billion-dollar industry that's growing by 20 to 25 percent each year.

But if you're reading this over an organic banana or a pesticide-free seaweed salad, don't sigh with satisfaction just yet. On average, 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy are used in producing, processing, transporting, and preparing every calorie of food we consume in the United States, according to studies by David Pimentel of Cornell University. While organic farming methods can save some energy in the production department, they don't have the same healthy effect on transportation; organic or not, oranges burn a lot of fuel on their way to Minneapolis.

Some critics say there's only one way for shoppers, restaurants, and grocery stores to correct this massive resource drain: Go one step "beyond organic" and buy fresh, pesticide-free food from local growers.

Eliot Coleman, who has raised produce in Maine for more than three decades, sells all of his fruits and vegetables within 25 miles of his year-round farm. He says the dominant, USDA-endorsed definition of organic doesn't fully describe what he does. "It just disavows the negatives -- pesticides and chemicals -- without embracing the positives," he says. Coleman argues that shopping locally not only conserves natural resources, but also helps protect small-scale farms like his.

A happy local grower in "Beyond
Organic."

Photo: Bull Frog Films.

Coleman is part of a loose network of farmers, consumers, and advocacy groups that is trying to push organic agriculture a step closer to sustainability. These activists use a variety of labels to describe what they're promoting -- beyond-organic food, authentic food, even slow food -- but they're all engaged in the surprisingly difficult task of getting local food on local tables.

"Let's figure out how to serve the local community so that foods are not shipped such long distances," California farmer and author Michael Ableman said in the recent documentary film "Beyond Organic." "Let's create an energy revolution in agriculture."

Locally grown food of all sorts used to be easy to get: You simply went to the nearest store and bought it. But since World War II, most small, diverse farms have given way to bigger, more specialized industrial enterprises. These larger growers, who benefit from economies of scale, can afford to ship their products throughout the country and even around the world -- while still charging less than smaller farmers.

The result? The food at your neighborhood supermarket comes from further and further away. One analysis of USDA data calculated that the average pound of produce in a Maryland market had traveled 1,685 miles; a recent report from the Worldwatch Institute estimated that food in the United States travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to table.

Joan Gussow, a former professor of nutrition at Columbia University, was one of the first scholars to speak out about the environmental costs of this trend. Gussow, who helped develop the federal organic standards, is the author of several books, including This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader. She's been preaching the local-food gospel for more than 25 years. "When I started writing and talking about local food, I was thought of as a little nuts," she says. "Back then, 'progress' meant eating anything you wanted, whenever you wanted to."

Times have changed, at least a little. Small farmers in the United States are still struggling for survival, but their local marketing options have begun to expand again. Back in 1984, Massachusetts farmer Robyn Van En helped bring the concept of community-supported agriculture from Europe to the United States. CSA farmers, who usually use organic methods but don't necessarily have federal organic certification, sell "shares" of their harvest to local consumers, collecting up-front payments that help cover the costs of planting and raising the produce. Shareholders then pick up produce at regular times throughout the growing season.

Harvest time at Frog Hollow Farm, a
California CSA.

Photo: USDA.

Today, more than 1,000 CSAs are active throughout the country, and they're operating in some unexpected places. Just Food, a nonprofit organization in New York City, has helped connect CSA farmers in the region with urban dwellers, making fresh CSA produce available at 28 locations in four boroughs. Thanks in part to the group's efforts, low-income New Yorkers can now use food stamps for their CSA fees; they can also pay on a sliding scale, or in installments throughout the season.

Farmers' markets, which provide another way for small farmers to reach their customers directly, are booming as well. The USDA estimates that the number of markets increased 79 percent from 1994 to 2002, with 3,100 operating today. Regional farmers' groups frequently publish directories to encourage on-farm sales, and one organization, LocalHarvest, has set up a nationwide Internet directory of small farmers and other local-food sources.

Yet it's not easy for these go-local efforts to draw customers away from the convenience (and, often, the rock-bottom prices) of one-stop shopping. Farming advocacy groups, such as the Community Alliance with Family Farmers in Davis, Calif., are trying to encourage individuals and retailers to buy local. With the help of a national group, FoodRoutes, the alliance has developed a stylish "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" label for products from California's central coast. Forty-five farmers have signed up for the year-old program, and a Santa Cruz-based chain of natural-food stores has agreed to buy and market the labeled products. Alliance regional coordinator Jered Lawson says his group plans to promote local labels in other parts of California and hopes to convince more restaurants and catering businesses to jump on the fresh-and-local bandwagon. Similar efforts are underway in other states, including Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon.

Such buy-local campaigns have some unexpectedly chic supporters. The Chefs Collaborative, cofounded in 1993 by fresh-food champion Alice Waters (the owner and executive chef of Chez Panisse Restaurant and Cafe in Berkeley, Calif.) and several colleagues, promotes the use of local and organic ingredients in fine cuisine and elsewhere. The international Slow Food movement, which boasts 65,000 members, celebrates the gourmet pleasures of fresh and local food and works to protect what it calls an "ark" of rare crop varieties and other "endangered tastes."

But big retailers -- the real meat of the food market -- remain out of reach for many small farmers. Chris Fullerton, manager of the 25-member Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative in Pennsylvania, says larger out-of-state growers can often offer lower prices and longer-lasting supplies to supermarket customers. "We might have a four or five week season while California has a 20 to 30 week season," he says. "[Prices] can be high some of the year and low some of the year, and [retailers can] average things out. But if we're in the market when California decides to play lowball, we don't have the same kind of flexibility." What's more, he says, big retailers often require their suppliers to carry liability-insurance policies that are prohibitively expensive for smaller growers.

Getting fresh at a farmer's market.

Photo: USDA.

Local farmers who want to do big business can look to entrepreneurs like Michael Rozyne for help. Rozyne, one of the founders of the Equal Exchange fair-trade coffee company, is getting local produce on supermarket shelves through a nonprofit marketing group called Red Tomato. The group is finding that the unique characteristics of local food -- freshness and variety -- appeal to supermarket shoppers as well as health-food-store patrons.

Farmers can also find encouragement in activists like Adriane Dellorco, a recent graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, who started campaigning for local-food options in the campus dining service during her first year. After spending much of her college career shuttling between Oberlin officials, dining-service managers, and local growers, she got results. "It takes years to make it happen," she sighs. But her efforts paid off: Oberlin's college dining service now channels slightly more than 5 percent of its food budget toward local farms and distributors, about a third of which goes toward organic products. A few other schools are following suit: This year, Waters helped begin a local-food initiative at a Yale University residence hall.

These small but significant victories are bringing hope -- and a little bit of cold, hard cash -- to growers who sell their produce close to home. But organic products, local or not, still account for only 1 to 2 percent of total food sales in the United States. "This movement is still at the level of a good idea," says Gussow. "A lot of people are now doing it, and it's exciting to think about the land and the people. But it hasn't yet reached the point of people saying, 'You know, we don't have any choice. If we don't do something, we're not going to have any local agriculture left.'"

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At Yale Dining Hall, A New Food Ethic Emerges

The word "cafeteria" does not exactly bring to mind healthful, organic, and delicious dining -- but Yale University is setting out to change all that. The ivy league institution has teamed up with Alice Waters (the chef who changed the face of American cuisine through Chez Panisse, her California restaurant) to create the Sustainable Food Project. When students return to Yale this fall, those who eat at Berkeley College, one of the university's 12 dining halls, will be greeted with locally grown produce carefully crafted into "Real Food" -- nutritious, simple, healthful meals. The project is designed not only to feed the students better, but also to educate them about the importance of what they eat and its relationship to economics, agriculture, and the environment. Real Food is a major contrast from the heavily processed foods usually used to meet the large-scale demands of university dining halls, but everyone involved is optimistic about the outcome. Project organizers say that the local farmers are ecstatic, that the students are interested, and that other big-name schools from Harvard to Stanford are eager to hop on board.

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More than 200 small grocers, restaurants, and seafood distributors in 40 U.S. states have announced that they will not buy, sell, or serve genetically altered fish. Among those joining the biotech boycott are such celebrity chefs as Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Michael Schenk at Oceana in New York City. Whole Foods Market, the world's largest natural foods retailer, also signed on, but big seafood-restaurant chains such as Long John Silver and Red Lobster declined to join the boycott. The campaign, launched yesterday by the Center for Food Safety, Friends of the Earth, and Clean Water Action, is largely a preemptive strike, since there are currently no genetically engineered fish on the market. But one company, Aqua Bounty Farms in Waltham, Mass., has applied for FDA approval of bioengineered salmon. Environmentalists fear escaped GM fish could interbreed with wild species and taint their genetic makeup, prey on native species, or take over their food supplies and habitat.

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