Seattle Global Justice Dinner

Last night I attended a fundraising dinner for the Community Alliance for Global Justice. The event paired local food producers like Taylor Shellfish Farms and Mt. Townshend Creamery with local chefs such as Julie Andres of La Medusa and Seth Caswell of Stumbling Goat Bistro. The evening was very, very hot but the food was wonderful and the cause felt urgent and relevant.

The organizers did a great job of making the connection between strong local economies and equitable global food systems. The consolidation of the food production infrastructure in the United States has parallels all over the world, but we're most closely linked with Mexico, whose displaced small-scale farmers often migrate here looking for work.

There's a lot of talk in the local food movement about what it would take to eat an exclusively local diet, and whether this objective is even feasible. Personally, I have no problem eating something produced far from home, as long as there's no reasonable local alternative, and it's been produced by a small-scale operation rather than a globalized behemoth.