Platter Chatter

Conversations about food.

Today we are featuring Anna Lappé, “bestselling author and sought-after public speaker, respected for her work on sustainability, food politics, globalization, and social change.”

What’s your definition of local?

I like non-rigid definitions of local. For me, local is the spirit of the food, more than an exact number of feet from my kitchen to the field where the food was grown. With that said, I try to support the farmers in what sociologist Jack Kloppenburg calls my local food shed. I shop at farmers markets when I can and look for tri-state food in the supermarket.

The real spirit of “local” doesn’t mean just measuring your food miles, especially for those items that my community can’t grow locally. For instance, my morning cup of coffee may not be “local,” but when I buy fair-trade certified coffee I know that my food dollar supported communities and didn’t just line the pockets of a CEO.

What’s your definition of sustainable?

I used to have a chip on my shoulder about the word “sustainable.” Most people on this planet don’t want to sustain where they are. They’re struggling; they want change, not the status quo. But I’ve come to see that the term sustainable can be aspirational, too. It doesn’t mean resigning ourselves to what is; it means working toward a vision of a world in which the values of fairness, community, and environmental stewardship are all respected. In this way, I think of sustainability as a process not a place. It’s not easy to achieve, but is a powerful goal to reach toward.

Sustainability takes on special meaning in an era of global warming. Sustainability is no longer optional; the fate of our planet depends on it. And food will play a huge role in either helping us move toward sustainability and lower greenhouse gas emissions, or by making our crisis worse. [You can learn more about the connection between our food system and climate change at this special primer page I've created with Sustainable Table.]

When you think of local, sustainable, and community, how would you rank the three (from most important to least) and why?

I often hear a version of this question, when I’m speaking to audiences and they ask: “Okay, so which is it: should we choose organic or local?”

In an ideal word, we wouldn’t have to make this choice. In an ideal world, our elected officials wouldn’t sanction the use on our nation’s farmland of man-made chemicals that are known endocrine disrupters, neurotoxins, or carcinogens.

But, well, we don’t live in an ideal world.

Given that reality, when posed with the hypothetical local-vs-organic head-to-head, I encourage people to choose local food from family farms. Those farms may not be organic now, but they may soon transition, particularly with customer support and encouragement.

But I can guarantee you that if those farms disappear–as many thousands do every year–we’ll lose that farmland forever, and never have a chance to have local or organic food at all.

What’s one thing people can do to be more local and sustainable?

There is so much we can do, I hate to boil it down to one thing, so I’ll cheat and give you two ideas: one that’s really specific and one that’s big picture!

First, if you don’t already, go to your local farmers market or become a member of a community support agriculture farm. (This site has lots of resources to make these choices). This is one of your best ways to connect with farm-fresh food and get to know the people behind your local food system.

The second suggestion is much more vague and really quite simple: Follow your passion. There is so much work that needs to be done on the path toward sustainability. Whether it’s starting community gardens, working with schools to bring in healthy foods, fighting for farmer-friendly policy, educating yourself about genetically modified foods, learning about the connections between the food system and climate change, or simply cooking more, whatever specific act you choose to do, you will be aligning yourself with the millions across the globe walking on the path of sustainability.
Anna Lappé is a great friend of Sustainable Table! Please read on to find out more about her:

Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author and sought-after public speaker, respected for her work on sustainability, food politics, globalization, and social change. Named one of TIME’s “Eco-Who’s Who,” Anna has been featured in The New York Times, Gourmet, O-The Oprah Magazine, Domino, Food & Wine, Body+Soul, and Vibe, among many other outlets. In 2007, she was honored, along with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, by The Missing Peace Project and was featured with Karenna Schiff Gore and Amanda Hearst in Contribute Magazine’s “21 Under 40 Making a Difference.”

With her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, Anna leads the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, a collaborative network for research and popular education, and the Small Planet Fund, which has raised nearly half-a-million dollars for democratic social movements worldwide, two of which have won the Nobel Peace Prize since the Fund’s founding in 2002.

Anna is a co-host of the public television series, The Endless Feast, and has appeared on more than one hundred radio and television shows. She can be seen on Sundance Channel’s Big Ideas for a Small Planet as well on Fox, NBC, PBS, and the CBC in Canada. She has also appeared on dozens of nationally syndicated radio programs, including National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition, The Diane Rehm Show, Talk to America, and WYNC’s Leonard Lopate Show with Ruth Reichl.

Anna is a frequent lecturer and has spoken at dozens of universities and colleges across the country, including Allegheny College, Boston College, Brown University, Columbia University, New York University, University of California at Berkeley, Wesleyan, and Yale University.

Anna’s first book, Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet, (Tarcher/Penguin 2002), co-written with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, chronicles courageous social movements around the world addressing the root causes of hunger and poverty. Winner of the Nautilus Award for Social Change, Hope’s Edge has been published in several languages and is used in classrooms across the country.

Called “ingenious” by The New York Times, Anna’s second book, Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), combines an exposé on industrial agriculture with chef Bryant Terry’s seasonal menus. For the Grub speaking tour, Anna traveled to fifty-five cities and participated in more than two hundred events.

Anna’s writing has been widely published in The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, and Canada’s Globe and Mail. Anna has also been a contributing author to a number of books, including We Got Issues!: A Young Women’s Guide to a Bold, Courageous and Empowered Life (Inner Ocean: September 2006), WorldChanging: A User’s Guide to the 21st Century (Abrams 2006), and Feeding the Future: How the Battle Over Food Will Change Your Life (Realize Media 2004).

Anna serves as a consultant to foundations, media projects, and non-profit organizations and served as a consulting editor for a Nation special issue on food. She is an active board member of the Center for Media and Democracy and the Community Food Security Coalition, the nation’s leading network of food justice and sustainable agriculture organizations.

Anna holds an M.A. in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and graduated with honors from Brown University. From 2004 to 2006 she was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the WK Kellogg Foundation.

Anna has worked in South Africa, England, and France. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York where she is at work on her third book for adults and a children’s book series.