The home where my family and I have lived for the past two years has a large avocado tree in the front yard. This tree generates the kind of abundance that is the stuff of dreams. I have never before eaten avocados with such reckless abandon: halved and pitted and spooned straight from the shell, day after day. They go in salads and guacamole, atop huevos rancheros and turkey burgers and yes, even toast. It is a gift that a plant can provide like this, and we have been happy to partake.
I have never been much of a gardener. I have grown my own herbs: basil, oregano, tarragon and sage, but I have killed many a rosemary plant, and lately I just avail myself of a sprig as needed from a rosemary hedge around the corner. How amazing is it that plants feed us? That they feed other animals, some of which feed us, too? That we can eat plants and animals that are harvested by our own hands, or those of our neighbors, rejecting massively complicated, largely unjust and increasingly unethical agricultural and food systems? There have always been — and continue to be — alternatives to those systems, beginning with Indigenous communities that once derived their entire sustenance from the land, eating what each ecosystem provided and building their cultures and traditions around stewarding, harvesting and sharing those foods. Many of these food traditions are upheld today.
And now, many ranchers and small-scale growers specialize in foods unique to their local soil and climate. Here on the central California coast, my weekly veggie box is filled with organic produce, most of it grown within 15 miles of my home. In Helena, Montana, you can sign up for a meat box, or purchase part of a cow. In this issue, you’ll read about the ranchers in Helena who started their own meat-processing plant, as well as the melon growers of Green River, Utah, who struggle to maintain their farms amid a changing economy and climate. Read these stories and consider how much your own diet is connected to your community and the landscape you roam. Across the West, consolidation and climate disruption are increasing the challenges for agriculture. The positive models, the ranchers and growers who are doing it right, deserve our support. It is possible to eat your way to a more sustainable future.
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This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The miracle of food.
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