"Local" is political, personal

What does local food mean to you?

The Berwick Research Institute wanted to find out, so the arts group hosted “Yum Local(e),” a public outdoor dinner party within the Project Yum festival on Oct. 13 in Somerville’s Union Square, with the goal of sparking conversation on the topic.  

Local food, it turns out, is political, emotional, practical—and more personal than you might think.   

On this brisk sunny afternoon, the Union Square plaza was bursting with activity. Organizers of Project Yum, a festival highlighting the food and culture of the neighborhood, criss-crossed the plaza setting up tables, hauling chairs, placing posters, straining to push carts stacked with massive coolers.  

Food-related art installations began to appear.  

 
Hilary Scott, a Somerville sculptor, arranged his gigantic solar-system-like sculpture on a wooden platform. Each “planet,” actually a beach ball, was covered with a different spice. He posted questions around the sculpture, for instance, “Which spice is the center of your universe?
 

Nearby, artist Susan Berstler tied 1001 small orange tags to a tree, each holding a typewritten fact about salt.

 A cooking competition among local chefs was ready to start, and the strong smell of gas grill fuel mingled in the air with the mixed aromas of Thai, Mexican, and Peruvian food from Union Square restaurants, scooped into Styrofoam containers for lines of festival-goers. 

At one edge of the festival, Yum Local(e) organizers and volunteers arranged bread and pitchers of fruit drink on three long tables. 

Susan Sakash donned a sandwich board—that is, a giant bread-shaped pair of boards—covered with Yum Local(e) posters. Sakash is one of the curators of The Berwick Research Institute’s “Meet Me at the Table” project, a series of dinners pondering questions of art and society; at Saturday’s dinner the big question was “What does local food mean to you?”

Sakash headed off to drum up participants from the festival.

Visitors arrived, volunteers seated them, and conversations began. Somerville residents Aaron Kagin, 27, and Elise Manning, 25, said they make a practice of buying food that’s in season and grown nearby.

“We’re going to be freezing things, and canning,” this year, said Kagin. Shopping at farmer’s markets and visiting the farms has given them a connection to the people behind the food, the couple said.

“One of the most interesting parts has been rediscovering foods I thought I knew,” said Kagin.

“I never thought I was a big fan of plums,” he continued, “but then I tried local plums, and I was hooked.

Yum Local(e) organizers had distributed a survey asking people to name three words they think of when they hear the phrase “local food.” Kagin’s words were “sustainable, community, and health.” Manning’s were similar: “fresh, community, and sustainable economy.” 

Not everyone at the table was as devoted to locally-grown food. “We can’t afford to do it,” said Jill Fairbank.  Fairbank’s three words were “trendy, fresh, and expensive.” She doesn’t want to sound cynical, she said, but living in Brighton without a car, “the closest place to buy locally grown foods is Whole Foods. So we’re getting it from a second vendor anyway.”

In a more wistful tone Fairbank said, “We used to can things. When we were children we didn’t really think about it,” she said. “Now it’s a label,” she added.

At the next table sat Damon Rock, 32, a Somerville resident who is not a strong advocate of the local food movement.  “There are obviously good arguments to it,” he said, such as reducing fuel consumption, “but I think taking political action through shopping is not an effective way to bring change.”

Despite his doubts, Rock was a diligent contributor to Saturday’s event, billed as a potluck; he brought a saucepan of thick and delicious red-lentil soup, which guests poured into plastic cups to sip.

Across the table from Rock, Deborah Nicholson said local food has to do with the people she cooks for and what she makes regularly. And also what’s practical.

“I work downtown and I shop on my way home. I buy groceries in Chinatown,” she said.

Nicholson, 34, also took the potluck seriously. Her homemade curry noodles with shitake mushrooms and cilantro, broccoli and celery was local food, she explained, in that “it’s a dish I make now that I live in Boston on a non-profit salary.”

Her friend Ernie Kim, 33, chatted with a Berwick volunteer over the steady hum of traffic punctuated with horn honks and sirens. Discovering they both grew up in New Jersey, the two tried to come up with foods local to their home state.

  Corn, they concluded. “And peaches,” added Kim. “Amazing,” he said with a faraway look, “Fantastic.”

  The sun was disappearing behind the buildings and a distinct chill seeping in when Lorraine Sacco joined the table. For the 50-year-old from Everett, local food has everything to do with family.

“We’re Italian,” she said, “We eat a pasta dinner on Sundays.” She remembers her mother coming home from the Haymarket in Boston, loaded with ingredients for making raviolis with homemade dough.

The larger Project Yum festival, in its celebration of “local crops and global shops,” blurred the definition of local food. At the Yum Local(e) potluck, the meaning of local food varied in almost as many ways as the number of visitors, but clearly the idea struck an emotional chord, whether through a new connection to farmers and crop seasons or through memories of foods that say “home,” however far or near home might be.
 

Sandra Larson is a freelance writer, journalism student at Harvard University Extension School, and Spare Change News arts editor.