DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR DINNER CAME FROM?

Bison Nation: A Way To See Value Of Local Food

By Todd Wilkinson, 2-13-07

When the idea was circulated last fall at a North American conference on buffalo in Denver sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society, “bison nation” had a ring of sounding like it came from the mouths of counterculturists.

Indeed, the document being passed around was titled “A Manifesto by Gary Nabhan and Kelly Kindscher.” And the question could be asked:  Counterculture to what?

Inserted in the broadsheet pamphlet, printed on recycled paper and sprinkled with quotations from Native American leaders of yore, was a call to action.
The message was watch what we eat.  Know what it is we eat.  Where it comes from.  Looking at the landscape around us for natural, pesticide- and herbicide-free foods, embracing our own foraging habits as a means for thinking about how to live happier and healthier.

For Nabhan, a well known and respected ecologist from Arizona and founder of Renewing America’s Food Traditions, and Kindscher, a first-rate botanist from Kansas, the Great Plains and higher western grasslands is a breadbasket for foods and animals that aren’t grown in monoculture.

It offers a menu that rests at the bottom of the food chain, feeding the big game ungulates, lying dormant in some cases, or dwelling beneath a canopy of crops that have replaced what was once a “native” diet.  RAFT offers a map identifying the ranges of what it calls North America’s food-based traditions.

The Rockies, extending from Mexico to Canada, are encompassed by five subcategories that Nabhan calls “Bison Nation”, “Pinyon Nut Nation”, “Salmon Nation”, “Moose Nation”, and “Chile Pepper Nation”.  In the Deep South, there’s even “Corn Bread & BBQ Nation” and along the California coast “Abalone Nation”.

The business of trying to eat foods homegrown in a local region—and recognizing the cultural attachment— is, in fact, a growing business.  It’s part of a nascent movement billions of dollars strong worldwide that, when set within the context of the BSE scare in beef and the salmonella outbreak in industrially-produced spinach, is gaining momentum.  Having a safe, reliable outlet for food already matters, but it will be a matter of survival if terrorists or serious disease affect the country as a whole.

Of course, as is obvious, the organic movement also has positive implications for grass-fed cattle producers, defenders of wildlife herds, amateur gardeners, healthy local restaurants, and families who shop at the farmers’ market or local co-op.

“Today, when much of the best soil in America produces only genetically-engineered annual crops of corn or soybeans, nitrate pollution in our streams, and dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, it may be hard to fathom the simple fact that much of that land had fed its human inhabitants for thousands of years while staying under the perennial cover of grasses and herbs,” Nabhan and Kindscher write, noting that the same plants that historically supported millions of bison also were sustainable edibles for native people and early settlers.

Okay, before we proceed further, most of us probably agree with the principle of eating local but how many are willing to act upon it when presented with more convenient, pre-packaged, highly processed and likely, cheaper options?

I know a few right now who will, out of habit, rebel against such thinking because they’ll write it off as a plot from wimpy progressives to tell them what to do. Yes, indeed, if a burly man feels like havin’ a hamburger made of meat that acquired genetic material from dozens of different bovines that converged at the feedlot and slaughterhouse, that has a high fat content, and carries a higher risk of causing diabetes and heart disease, you ought to darn sure be able to have it.

Go for it.

But Nabhan and Kindscher aren’t preaching at you.  They’re merely trying to point out that there’s an alternative to the blind spot we Americans have with our food.  They want us to slow the fast pace down. Groups like the Chef’s Collaborative have enlisted cooks from the finest restaurants in America to promote local native “slow food” as opposed to industrial fast food.  So has the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, the Seed Savers Exchange, and Slow Food USA have embraced their call.

Every year in the fall, the Corporation for the Northern Rockies in Livingston, Montana hosts a special celebration at Chico Hot Springs that features a multi-course dinner, from drinks and appetizers through dessert, consisting of foods grown and harvested in our corner of the West.  Hundreds of food growers from across the West attend.

Sure, the Rockies in the middle of winter is a difficult place to go scrounging, but as the Corporation for the Northern Rockies has shown, we can eat healthier without having to do that. 

Harvesting from the bio-region isn’t radical.  A decade ago, Kelly, Wyoming hook and bullet writer Ted Kerasote discussed it at length in his excellent book, Blood Ties.

A celebration of hunting, Ted’s book took took animals rights activists to task in pointing out their own hypocrisy.  While they chastised Ted for being a hunter, he told the urban gatherers to take a long look at the rice in their bowls they eat righteously as part of their Vegan diet.  As Ted noted, the rice they were eating, whether in Wyoming or Washington, D.C, was likely harvested from a sea of expensive oil and taxpayer subsidies if one considers the costs of operating the machinery to plant and harvest it, the irrigated water, the costs and fuel associated with shipping it thousands of miles to market, displaying it in a store lighted by electricity and then to cooking it at home.

Supporting local producers, Kerasote noted, has many dividends, including a reduction in impacts to the environment, giving the consumer solace in knowing where the food came from, supporting local jobs, and in recognizing the value of biodiversity.

Nabhan’s and Kindscher’s manifesto calls for the return of wild bison to the plains but short of that the first step of being a citizen in Bison Nation is asking how the food got to your plate.  Unfortunately, for many of the dinners we eat, making the inquiry may give us an answer that either isn’t known or appealing.

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