What’s the last thing you ate? Do you know where it came from? How far did it travel to make it to your kitchen or plate? Who grew it? What did they use to grow it? These are all questions that I never used to ask about the food I was eating.
Many of us were born into a world where we can drive to a supermarket and purchase produce and ingredients that were once only available on other continents and only in season for certain periods of the year. Like most kids, there were a few foods that I grew up disliking. Raw tomatoes on a sandwich were often a non-negotiable addition for me; but once I tried a fresh, in season tomato straight from the garden, I was all in.
The first time I was presented with these concepts was during my time at the University of LaVerne’s STEM Camp in 2014. During the program, we visited a community garden where I saw my first purple carrot, white eggplant, and orange watermelon. The STEM camp was also the first time I learned about composting. Needless to say, it was an incredibly formative experience.
As I continued to learn more about gardening, I realized how my food was inextricably linked to the climate crisis. There are many layers to how agriculture plays into this existential threat; deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution, insect decline due to pesticides, and water rights are all linked to how we grow and eat our food.
It can be quite overwhelming to think about, and depending on your socioeconomic status and whether or not you live in a food desert, your options for changing where you source your food may be limited. As I’ve continued to work towards eating more sustainably, I’ve learned a lot about the intersections of privilege and food.
The first intersection to discuss is food autonomy.
In 2019, my parents moved into a home with a lawn for the first time in my life. It was exciting for many reasons, but after years of experiencing drought and being educated to conserve water, it was frustrating to see how much water it took to keep a lawn green; and for what? My wife Marcela and I channeled that frustration into our garden.
With the support of my parents, what began as a little sliver of a pumpkin patch has turned into a large plot where we can grow a number of delicious, fresh foods and keep our soil healthy by composting all of our food scraps.
Being able to grow food on your own property is a privilege for a number of reasons. The most apparent privilege is having the ability to own land, something that is far from an equitable process.
Even so, until recently, you could get a citation in the City of Los Angeles for growing food on dirt in your neighborhood without a permit. That’s exactly what happened to Ron Finley when he planted vegetables in his soil. After fighting back, the laws were changed, and the landscape of food autonomy is shifting for many communities in South LA.
A seldom-discussed privilege of growing your own food is the health of your soil. Although many parts of Los Angeles were formerly orchards, groves, and farms, due to industrialization, many communities across Los Angeles have contaminated soil that may contain heavy metals like lead. It’s important to test your soil for contamination when possible, along with researching what may have been on or near your property in the last century or so.
If you don’t have access to soil where you live, check and see if there’s a community garden near you. On top of being a fantastic “third place,” community gardens are great spaces to meet new friends, learn new skills, and enjoy greenspace with others. Community gardens are also great places to bring your food scraps for composting! Be sure to check what kind of scraps they accept, and remove any stickers that may be on your fruit and vegetables before composting them.
With all of these lifestyle changes in mind, it’s important to note how difficult it is to compete with the economy of scale, especially if you live in a city. One of our first garden experiments was growing heirloom corn. I was convinced that we’d be able to grow my own blue and red corn, grind our own masa, and make tortillas and tamales. After months of hard work, we harvested about 5 tortillas worth of corn.
This experience applies to a lot of produce that we consume often. We hope to be able to grow all of our own food someday, but for now, we need to supplement what we can’t grow ourselves with food that was grown locally. This is where your local farmer’s market comes into play.
I grew up going to the Farmer’s Market, a historic site in Miracle Mile that was once one of the largest farmer’s markets in the region. My mom and I would walk over together to get fresh strawberries (and donuts). Now, for the last two years, we’ve been going to the LA River Farmer’s Market in Chinatown. The story of LA State Historic Park is one for another column, but the long story short is that this park is a miracle of land rehabilitation.
Not only can we buy bread, eggs, produce, juice, coffee, and snacks directly from local vendors, we’ve also made some genuine friendships within our local community. One of our favorite vendors, the Plant Mon, even put together the bouquet for our wedding, which was held at the park.
We rarely find ourselves going to supermarkets, which has dramatically shifted the way we eat. If something isn’t in season, it’s unlikely that we have it in our home. This change has forced us to cook and eat much more creatively, and it’s introduced us to a number of foods that we rarely ate before.
Once again, on the topic of privilege, it’s worth noting that the farmer’s market can be more expensive than the supermarket. You may find yourself needing to rebudget to account for that difference. Something we’ve realized while shopping solely at the farmer’s market is how much less we over consume groceries. It may just be me, but I often purchase a ton of snacks that I don’t actually need when I shop at a supermarket; the farmer’s market balances that issue.
I have no doubt that we’ll continue to make mistakes, learn, and adjust as we explore this new lifestyle. As with many sustainability-focused lifestyle changes, taking a step of any size makes a difference. Supplementing just a couple of your supermarket groceries with produce from your local farmer’s market can change the way you experience food, and learning to grow your own food, even just for fun, can introduce you to a new world of possibilities.
Image Credits: Stevie Gray
About the Author:
Stevie Gray
Born and raised in Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, Stevie Gray is a non-fiction storyteller and film production sustainability professional determined to produce solutions-forward work that evokes systemic change. In his travels, Stevie has witnessed the intense effects of our species on Earth's ecosystems, fueling his commitment to share intersectional stories that have local and global impact. Stevie hopes to motivate readers to work towards dismantling the harmful systems that have brought us to this point in our history.
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