Along with peas and leafy greens, local-food talk is in bloom this early May. A mass mailing by the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), plus a pair of events connected to UVA’s Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, are attempting to jump-start local buzz about how food is produced, distributed and eaten around Charlottesville. “A number of moons are lining up,” says Professor Tim Beatley—among them rising interest in organic food, worries about food safety, and concern for the environmental costs of transporting food from faraway places.
 We presume it’s local, organic, and pathogen-free: A meal is laid out for attendees of The Virginia Food Security Summit on May 11. |
Along with Tanya Denckla Cobb, Beatley has twice taught a course in which students study the local food system and make recommendations to improve it. Out of a meeting last spring between those students and the public, a group called E.A.T. Local formed and began discussing things like how schools are supplied with food and what might be done to encourage small farmers. On May 1, Beatley and Cobb’s second crop of students presented a new round of research, this time more policy-focused.
Specific ideas? They range from programs for growing food on vacant city lots to proposals for a centralized food warehouse. “A number of the issues the students dealt with are already being addressed by the E.A.T. Local group,” says Beatley; he hopes to see the town and gown contingents merge their efforts.
Beatley and Cobb also helped to plan a Food Security Summit for May 11—this one a more sweeping event at which the focus is all of Virginia and the speakers included a Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services employee as well as a member of Michigan’s Food Policy Council. Meanwhile, every household in Charlottesville and Albemarle recently received a copy of the PEC’s Buy Fresh Buy Local guide, a listing of local farms and farmers’ markets.
It’s a lot of hopeful talk, but issues of local food in Charlottesville have long had a contentious side, including a recent skirmish between the city and some City Market vendors over kitchen-inspection regulations. According to Beatley, the summit wouldn’t specifically focus on this longstanding rift, but, he says, “I’d be surprised if it didn’t come up.”
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