| This is an excellent time for reflection, since it's still currently July 24 as I type this on Pacific Time. Exactly one year ago today, I stepped off an Amtrak train at Union Station in NW Portland with just a backpack and two other bags containing everything I needed (some clothes and a few books...) to start my new life far, far away from my old ruined one. I had some troubles and a pretty rough and bumpy road at first, including 5 weeks living in a scummy SRO room on W. Burnside last August and September. Hello, The Abbey! All the charm of an incredibly beautiful 1920-something midrise building with amazing views of the city from every floor's kitchen, but with the drawback that the place also hasn't been cleaned since about 1945. With a real 1920's-vintage elevator in which you have to pull the gate closed yourself, literally with a rope, before it moves...while trying desperately to ignore the permanent stench that was a combination of the pizzeria on the ground floor and the general rot of the 'hotel' itself. You could always use the stairs, of course...but then you'd have to step over the passed out drunks and junkies, or the occassional inexplicable bloodied and moaning beating victim. And the 'kitchens' (each floor had one! Whee!) were mainly used by residents to cook things other than food. Think 'injectable substances'. This was the Portland you don't see on 'Grist' or on the 'Green Cities' lists. Was definitely an 'interesting' place to live, though...
But things have finally long since come together and it's worked out great for me here, especially since March. I know I made the right decision.
Enough navel-gazing for now, though. On to the point of this diary...
From the article linked to in the intro -
In the early 1970s, Cline says, there was a flowering of food co-ops in the United States. Many co-ops, including People's, began as buying clubs that enabled members to acquire foods in bulk that weren't available in mainstream grocery stores. "It became wildly popular," Cline says, "and a lot of those buying clubs became storefronts."
Because of their origins, co-ops are sometimes seen as throwbacks or relics of the wheat germ era. "A lot of times the average person thinks of co-ops as something of the past, of our parents' generation," says Cline, who is 29. A place like People's may simply seem to be a prototype for the new school of natural food stores such as Whole Foods or New Seasons, the local chain of high-end natural food stores.
In 2004, when New Seasons opened a 25,000-square-foot store on Southeast Division Street, just a few blocks from People's, supporters of the co-op were concerned. Planners at People's braced for at least a temporary downturn, but, Cline says, "We never saw a slump in sales when they opened."
Instead, she says, "There's been a synergistic relationship between People's Food Co-op and New Seasons, because even though we are obviously in competition in some ways, in other ways we really aren't."
And that's true. I'm a regular customer of both People's and that particular New Seasons (the 'Seven Corners' store on SE Division). What I can't get at one, I walk over to the other to get. If it's at both places, I'm personally getting it from People's...but the great thing is that I (and we...) have that choice here in the first place. Too many places don't. I remember in Newark, NJ not too long ago - food 'choices' back there all too often involved KFC, or Lay's potato chips and 'frozen burritos' from either a corner bodega or the Exxon "Tiger Mart"; or on the (extreme) other end, a bus trip up to the Whole Foods on Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair to eat healthy, but decidedly not locally. And while I was able to afford to personally choose the latter, most in the city obviously were not.
Probably shouldn't, but I just have to quote these two more paragraphs from that article to illustrate a key point -
Also important for many customers is what isn't here. People's is all vegetarian and the produce is all organic, although not all of it is officially certified. The chocolate and coffee is fair trade. Buying guidelines bar artificial flavors and colors, require that each supplier treats its workers equitably, and even prohibit packaging that is "exploitive or oppressive."
and -
Store policies, reached by consensus, ban products that contain genetically modified organisms, artificial preservatives, even trans fat.
Read the whole article, definitely worth it...
I know that the food I buy there won't kill me, and also isn't a product of others' misery. And I feel the same way about my purchases from local farmers at our markets whom I know personally, and interact with on a regular basis. That trust is crucial to a successful local food system, and is only possible through a network of farmers markets, true community food co-ops and neighborhood grocers who actually take their role in the community seriously. Through our farmers markets, food co-ops (Alberta Co-op and Food Front are two other great examples of same here in Portland) and New Seasons Market, we have that system here in Portland. This shouldn't just be a 'niche' thing for progressive cities and regions, though - it should be the default food system everywhere in America, and all across the world for that matter. There's no reason we should have to settle for a system in which people in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and New York have abundant opportunities to eat well; while people in Detroit MI, Topeka KS, Rawlins WY, and Jasper AL do not.
Going much further in depth on this soon, but just wanted to get some general introductory stuff out there first. A few places in America do actually have local food systems that work relatively well, and we can look towards these to stitch together bits and pieces to form a model for the entire nation. Eventually, we're going to have to get some seriously focused politicians on board this issue too, though. Here's to hoping a few real ones will step up before it's too late, and we're left having to weed our way through demagogues and other opportunists... |
