Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver wrote The Poisonwood Bible, and if you haven't read it, treat yourself. It's long, but the story is thought-provoking and the prose is amazing.
In her latest book, she switches gears a bit and writes from her real life. She and her family have moved from Tucson, AZ, to Southwest Virginia. More and more bothered by the energy crisis, they want to explore the possibility of growing their own food. They move to a farm and commit to eating only what they can grow themselves, or at the very least obtain from other local growers, for one year.
In the introductory chapters, Kingsolver explains their decision to go local by talking in depth about the problems of a society that transports food the way we do. Not only are we using tons and tons of fossil fuel, but we are losing the cultural identity that comes from producing regional delicacies that can't come from anywhere but where they're grown. European countries have maintained food-centered identities and so should we.
She also makes a strong argument for bringing agricultural studies back to the schools. Students used to study food and agriculture as part of their regular curriculum because everyone lived on farms. When we moved off the farm, we stopped studying farming. But here's the thing, Kingsolver says, we still eat. Yes, trigonometry is important, and learning the Preamble is important, but could it possibly be more important than learning about something everyone does at least three times a day, every day? Food for thought, no pun intended.
I'll keep you posted on how her year goes....so far, it's a good read, although a bit to the left of my normal fare.
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