As a foodie, I love to eat, cook, and think about food, and my writing and reading reflect this love. (Some might call it an obsession, and they wouldn’t be too far off.) However, I came of age in the 1970s, when the environmental movement was bursting forth, and I caught the environmental bug in my early teens. It has been with me ever since, and writing and the environment have been twin concerns for all of my adult life. A love of food, of course, fits perfectly with environmentalism because all food comes from Earth, and how we harvest, hunt, fish, and farm has a tremendous effect, often for ill, on the environment. With so many of us on the planet—over 6 billion and rising—the issue of how to feed everyone without destroying the environment becomes ever more important. When you add in our complete dependence on oil—from fertilizers to harvesting to transportation—it doesn’t take long to realize that food, along with energy and manufacturing, is at the center of all things environmental.  As Mark Bittman might put it, food matters. And, by extension, what we eat matters, not only for our own health but for the health of the planet as well. 

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day, which was started by Senator Gaylord Nelson on April 22, 1970 and was conceived as an environmental “teach-in” to expand environmental awareness and perhaps even come up with some solutions to problems of the times—polluted rivers, smog, and DDT. Gaylord and the other Earth Day organizers were unprepared for the response—“20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated.” (Here is a link to a piece written by Senator Nelson about the first Earth Day.) 

My husband, Clif, and I are lucky enough to live in a town—Winthrop—that will be sponsoring Earth Week activities (April 17th to April 24th), from movies to gardening seminars to a public supper featuring food from local farms. A community garden is in the works. Clif and I are thrilled, and we will be participating in many of these activities. (Here is a link to the town of Winthrop’s website and the list of Earth Week events.) Naturally, I’ll be writing about some of these events, and perhaps Clif will take some photos. And you can be sure I’ll be thinking about local and organic food even more than I usually do, which is quite a lot of the time. 

It might even be fun to plan a mostly local dinner each night during Earth Week. As Ali from the blog Henbogle put it in a recent comment on one of my posts, “Don’t forget the incredible locally made cheeses, the good Maine butter, maple syrup on whatever is to hand…” No, indeed, and these ingredients are certainly a good basis for a mostly local dinner menu.

I’ll be planning and posting. What better way to celebrate Earth Week than with local food?