I realized with a bit of a jolt that his pastoral, or agrarian, outlook doesn’t adequately deal with the fact that so many of us now live in big cities far removed from the places where our food is grown and from opportunities for relationship marketing. When I asked how a place like New York City fit into his vision of a local food economy he startled me with his answer: “Why do we have to have a New York City? What good is it?” If there was a dark side to Joel’s vision of the postindustrial food chain, I realized, it was the deep antipathy to cities that has so often shadowed rural populism
...more
