the economy. Such a system also reduces the demand on energy resources and reduces costs associated with the transportation and preservation of food. Hewitt is a small-scale farmer with a conver-
sational style—as if he is taking a stroll with the reader through the town of Hardwick and its verdant surround- ing farmland. Like any community, Hardwick is rich in history, characters and rumors—and Hewitt presents each with compassion and humor. He shares a range of experiences from butchering pigs to visiting a cheese cave, from inhaling compost to volunteering in the local co-op, all while skillfully examining the pros and cons of a local food system.
In 2008, the town of Hardwick captured the attention of national media for its emergence as a successful ag- ricultural model, thanks in large part to the promotional efforts of Tom Stearns, the de facto spokesman and own- er of High Mowing Organic Seeds. Stearns is among a handful of what Hewitt terms an agripreneur “(a word… coined to describe the agrarian entrepreneurialism that infuses many of the region’s food-based enterprises).” Although creating a decentralized food system based on businesses producing cheese, yogurt, soy, honey, composting and organic seeds (to name a few) may be a bright and hopeful concept, Hewitt also deftly describes some of the pitfalls.
As adamant as Stearns and others are about the ben- efits of Hardwick as a local food model, some locals are less than enthusiastic. Hewitt’s neighbor Suzanna Jones (also a small scale farmer) is unimpressed with Stearns and his plans. She says, “Tom Stearns’s approach to agriculture has so many elements of that (currency) system that it’s not an alternative … What do people re- ally need? They don’t need convenience; they need food, clothing, shelter. They don’t need this gentrified green, boutique scene.” Jones’s attitude is not opposed to the idea of a local food system; she believes that Hardwick has a long-established system already—it is the home of the Buffalo Mountain Food Co-op, one of the oldest operating food cooperatives in the county. Instead, she sees communities such as Newark, N.J., in greater need of such a system because it is so reliant on other entities. Hewitt’s willingness to show both sides of the story is one of the great strengths of this book. Another is his ability to describe the landscape, the people, their passion for locally grown food, and the possibilities a different type of food system holds. If you care about exploring these possibilities, read this book. —Robin Intemann
70 Winter/Spring 2012
greenwomanmagazine.com
Making Supper Safe: One Man’s Quest To Learn The Truth About Food Safety Ben Hewitt (Rodale, 2011)
As I write this review, one of the deadliest food-borne illness out- breaks in the last ten years, listeria, has claimed the lives of 25 people
across the United States, and over a hundred more are ill. The deadly bacteria was traced to a crop of can- taloupe from a farm in Colorado. There’s a lot that’s unsettling about this particular food-illness outbreak; the number of deaths, the people still suffering, and how widely and how quickly it spread. In Making Supper Safe, Ben Hewitt sets out to inform Americans of our increasingly vulnerable food industry, vulnerable due to the “consolidation of agribusiness and the ever expanding distance between people and their sources of nourishment…” Hewitt begins and ends the book with a strong visual as he tags along with a dumpster-diver in Ver- mont. After all, what sounds more dangerous than eat- ing out of a dumpster? But what I really think Hewitt illustrates with these bookend chapters is awareness. Interestingly, the dumpster-diver or “freegan” is very conscious of food safety and risk and not as vulnerable as Hewitt believes the average American is. Pathogenic bacteria are everywhere, and while many may be familiar with the bacterium E. coli, Hewitt explains that salmonella and listeria actually kill far more Americans each year. In simple language without a lot of scientific jargon, Hewitt explains why and how outbreaks happen and who is to blame.
Hewitt also addresses the raw milk debate, raw food, food rights, antibiotic use in food-producing ani- mals, high fructose corn syrup, the increase in multina- tional food processors, and the global seed industry con- centration. Each of these topics could be a book-length subject in itself, but Hewitt does a good job introducing the topics and explaining how each adds to the debate. Hewitt doesn’t draw conclusions on food safety; he only presents information in an easy-to-read journal- istic style. He clearly has his opinions, revealed in state- ments like, “…the most palpable threat in [Americans] food is the policy behind it, a policy that has given rise to a system of constant abundance that, even as it fills our stomachs to bursting, offering a false promise of
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