Eating in the Foodshed

The Hub City Farmers Market opened on Saturday, and hundreds of people turned out downtown for the launch. Farmers markets are nothing new in Spartanburg. This is the third location I've known since I was a boy. I remember going to the Kennedy Street market to what I've always called "the old farmers market" with my mama to buy homegrown tomatoes decades ago, and the last few years there was one held in the parking lot near Morgan Square.

But hopes are high for this new manifestation of the age-old Southern tradition. Flip through Phil Racine's Hub City book SEEING SPARTANBURG if you want to know what the "farmers market" used to look like in Morgan Square on Monday, the traditional "sales day." One of the most famous photos of the Hub City shows wagons pulled by mules filling the square in front of the Daniel Morgan statue on a Monday in the late 1880s. Farmers and traders came from all over the region to gather on the square for market day. They used the chance to catch up on gossip and do some shopping themselves.

Last Saturday, with the backing of the Spartanburg Nutrition Council and support of the city, the summer air was filled with bluegrass music, and two rows of multicolored tents were set up on the green lawn in front of the Magnolia Street Station. Parking extended far back behind the depot in an area claimed from the kudzu. People came with high hopes and broad smiles. Now once a week from early summer to fall everyone in town will know where to purchase the fruits of local soil.

"Eating in the foodshed," that's what people nationwide call this movement back toward eating local. The term "foodshed" is a play on "watershed," and it takes its power from that comparison. Watershed is a term for how water from smaller streams flows into a larger river. Foodshed describes the way food flows from areas where it's grown into the places where it's consumed.

So simply saying "foodshed" creates a way of thinking about local, sustainable food systems. In this way of thinking, eating apples from near Hendersonville or peaches from Inman bought at the farmers market is "eating in the foodshed." Buying that avocado with the little sticker on it from California, as good as it tastes, and eating it in a salad, is not.

Think for a moment about where most of your food comes from. I mean think about every little bit of itthe coffee in my cup this morning is an organically grown Mexican French Roast and the grains in my favorite cereal were probably grown somewhere in the Midwest. Both these items are tasty, but they are from a long way out of my foodshed. So far I haven't eliminated them from my diet, but being aware of where these foods originate changes my attitude toward them. Someday I might decide to find a cereal made from grains right here in my foodshed. The coffee poses a little bigger problem!

Food now "flows" into Spartanburg from everywhere in the world thanks to these wonders of modern shipping. Purchasing avocados or Mexican organic coffee are two of these wonders of our contemporary lives. Another wonder is how cheap food from everywhere can now be. What is often not considered in the cheap "world food" equation though are all the hidden environmental, social, and human health costs of eating from world markets.

This weekend gas is $2.60 a gallon. Gas costs also figure into "eating in the foodshed." If gas tops $3.00 a gallon will it be worth it to truck exotic food into a place when much of what we eat could be grown locally?

Trying to "eat in the foodshed" helps us account for some of these costs if we want to, though even local food now is not that simple. Who truly grows these "local" foods? Is it the farmer selling them from the back of his truck, or does that farmer hire illegal workers to till, plant, and harvest these crops?

There wasn't much local food at the farmers market on the first Saturday to ask these questions about. Those who came early got to purchase most of the fruits of our local fields. Because of this the opening of the market was mostly ceremonial, though an hour into it a truck pulled up full of cantaloupes and watermelons and the masses descended on it like something out of THE GRAPES OF WRATH. Money was exchanged, and a few local shoppers walked away with a "foodshed" melon.

Under the colorful tents there were a few local crafts for sale, and some had brought flowers and breads and cookies. There was even a tent where you could buy organic dog cookies for 25 cents each. As a special treat I even let me dog "eat in the foodshed" for several mornings.

I hope the farmers market becomes the central location to prompt Spartanburg to eat more in our foodshed. That would make it worth the trip to the train station for "market day." We don't plan to abandon BiLo, but we do plan on strolling back through the market to see what turns up for sale.