Dinner and a Class Lesson
MALS course looks at the locavore movement
Friday, August 8, 2008
Durham, NC -- The locavore movement, a new trend that advocates eating food from local farms is not only promoting good food but new scholarship and teaching.
Last month, 14 students in the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) class, "What's for Dinner: Culture and Agriculture," sat down around the conference table at the MALS office on Campus Drive for dinner and discussion on the ethical and practical implications of sustaining small local farmers.
Chapel Hill Creamery co-owner Portia McKnight, Fickle Creek Farm’s Ben Bergmann & Noah Ranells and Steve & Martha Mobley of Meadow Lane Farm joined Laura Hall, co-owner of Bon Vivant Catering and the Duke Divinity School’s Refectory Café in discussed the virtues and the dilemmas of their businesses.
Interest in the locavore movement has been motivated in part by Michael Pollan’s popular book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Class instructor Kathy Rudy, associate professor of women’s studies, said students were eager to hear from the farmers and chefs how they could eat organic and support the growing local food movement. Rudy said she believes we are seeing the beginnings of a new social movement in America.
Two local cattle ranchers at the meal, Steve and Martha Mobley, told the class about the benefits of “closed herds” and tagged animals, processes that give consumers the ability to trace their meat not only to the farm and specific animal it came from, but to the genetic history of that animal as well. Through such tracing, the Mobleys can tell you “who its mamma and daddy were,” something unheard of in the meatpacking industry.
The menu was consumed with particular delight by “future-farmer” Darryl, the four-year-old son of Ranells and Bergman of Fickle Creek Farm. Bergman spoke to the group and encouraged them to think about weighing the humane treatment of animals against the environmental costs of eating a soy burger grown on another continent.
All farmers encouraged students to think about organic and nutrient dense foods, and ways to afford the cost by eating smaller portions of meats. Participants commented that they wanted to make “the connection of community and food;” some felt “an ever-increasing anger over our dangerous situation.”
The discussion, student Jack Pless said, “raised topics that each could be a whole course!”
Students in this class learned how hard it was to make a sustainable farm successful; they understood better how “the biology of the world feeds us,” and through this class, they were empowered to make different choices for themselves, and to encourage others—especially chefs and restaurant owners—to consider buying more food locally
