French Local-Food Network Shows Global Synergy
OCTOBER 29, 2007 -In France, we have an association, called AMAP, who gathers peasants who directly send you an organic fruits et vegetables basket every week. They say we should have a “family farmer” as we have a “family doctor”! -Elizabeth, France
I always think of France as being in the vanguard of good local food. So when I went to learn more about the “Association pour le maintien d’une agriculture paysanne” that Elizabeth mentioned (in my rough translation, Association for the Maintenance of Peasant Farming), I was amazed to learn that it was inspired by a French couple’s trip to America in 2000. (It’s not just McDonald’s after all!)
On a visit to their daughter in Manhattan, the couple - market gardeners by trade - saw people carrying baskets of the good food of the good earth into a church. It turned out the farm from which it came was within one hour of New York City, and this was Community Supported Agriculture. So they took the idea home . . . and of course improved on it immensely. Now, you can look up your region of France and find not just a vegetable farm to subscribe to, but a complete farmgate package also including fruits, cheese, meat and honey. In France, peasant is not a derogatory term; it is claimed with pride.
The modern concept of Community Supported Agriculture actually began in Japan in 1965, where they called it Teikei, in response to the increased use of chemicals in farming, and the poisonous results of chemicals in the environment. It also was a reaction against the import of American foodstuffs that competed with local products, and the drain of rural people into city factory jobs. Forty years on, there are more than 16 million members.
From Japan and Switzerland it spread to the United States in 1985; in Portugal the concept is called reciproco, and in Quebec, Agriculture soutenue par la communauté. It’s now in countries as diverse as Great Britain and Ghana - showing that local food values, and benefits, span the globe and vastly different life circumstances. (James and I were excited when, recently, a Taiwanese publisher bought the right to print our book in Mandarin.) The French group Urgenci hopes to bring us all together to support the farmer-direct movement around the world. -ADS
