Indisputably edible
A quarterly magazine called Edible Shasta-Butte has started up. I’ve been looking through its first issue.
Its mission is to change the way America eats, “community by community.” Its the newest addition to a “family” of about 20 magazines Edible Community Publications publishes throughout the country in such places as San Francisco, Phoenix, Portland, Santa Fe and Memphis to celebrate “the abundance of local foods, season by season.”
The first issue has stories about Maisie Jane’s California Sunshine Products in Chico, Chaffin Family Orchards near Oroville and Big Bluff Ranch outside Red Bluff. It has a calendar listing of “edible events” in the region, a directory of farmers markets and a couple of recipes from Craig Thomas and Maria Venturino, who own the Red Tavern.
When I did the food pages at the E-R, I enjoyed writing about these kinds of specialty food growers and producers. It seemed every time I turned around a new one popped up.
It’s intriguing these businesses are turning up in a nation of corporate farming, mass-produced food and a distribution and storage system that make it possible to get food from anywhere at any time of the year. Isn’t that the perfect system?
The insistence on seasonal, regionally grown foods isn’t a problem here. We have a long growing season and a climate and soil conditions that allow just about anything to grow here. But I don’t think places like Maine and Utah are so lucky. I’ll bet farmers markets in those places don’t have a a quarter of the produce we have in the Sacramento Valley.
Local and seasonal doesn’t sound like such a big treat in a lot of places. That’s why I’m doubtful the current system will ever fundamentally change although the businesses appealing to niche markets will continue to proliferate. I’ve heard that rising fuel costs may start to make regional food systems more appealing, but I think the more likely outcome is that we’ll turn to cheaper fuels.