Can “local” get too mainstream?

I’m going to chair a panel this Saturday called “Farm-to-Table: Moving Toward the Mainstream” at the DC Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier’s Salute to Women in Gastronomy Symposium. I had already planned to ask the panelists and the audience what they thought about things like Walmart having a local foods forager in our region (I met him at the MD Governor’s Buy Local Challenge Cook-off last summer). Then this link came through my email from the Slow Food DC listserve, courtesy of the tireless online town crier, Marsha Weiner: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/walmart-local-produce. Atlantic writer Corby Kummer is advised by a staffer at the Environmental Defense Fund whose been studying Walmart’s agricultural programs, “It’s getting harder and harder to hate Walmart.” Kummer sets out to learn why.

It’s an important article and an important idea. The folks on my panel this Saturday will include Kati Gimes of Slow Food DC, along with Phil Petrilli of Chipotle and Louise Mitchell of Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment. While the work Slow Food’s work, especially in the U.S., is reaching out to the mainstream one person at a time, Mitchell is working with hospitals to get local produce, meats and dairy onto their campuses, through cafeterias, farmers markets, CSAs and other channels. Petrilli is in charge of Mid-Atlantic operations for Chipotle and was responsible for the much-applauded deal to get Polyface meats into their restaurants.

When truly local and sustainable products are available to the masses, whether they know they are eating them or not, is this a good thing? I’m looking forward to hearing what our seminar attendees will have to say about this on Saturday. Just a few years ago, purists were decrying the proliferation of organics, but there were actual standards and regulations that many felt had been undermined by corporate interests. Even where the terms were not disputed, there seemed to be a little bit of regret at the loss of the insider-ness of the organic community. Maybe we are on the cusp of that with local and sustainable as well. But that kind of exclusivity seems rather at odds with the concept of eating local and supporting our local economies. Read the Walmart piece–it’s eye-opening. Even if I don’t shop at Walmart, I don’t see why the folks who do shouldn’t have access to better food and why the farmers who sell to them shouldn’t have access to that market. What do you think?