One of the joys, and sometimes frustrations, of trying to eat locally is that, well, you have to eat locally produced foods. When we're accustomed to peaches or zucchinis at any time of year, retraining ourselves not to expect blueberries in the winter or broccoli in the summer. But one of the harshest lessons in being a locavore has come this summer in the form of the tomato blight, the same fungus that caused the Potato Famine (tomatoes, potatoes, and even eggplants are in the same family of vegetables so diseases and parasites that affect one often affect the others).
This blight has had a huge impact on almost all farms and home gardens in the Northeast. Apparently, the blight fungus lives in the soil and even the air and will generally only strike when weather conditions are ideal: cold, wet, humid. And yes we were (un)lucky enough to have this kind of a summer. Additionally, experts point to the "big-box stores" as the source of the home gardener's blight. Diseases and fungi can easily spread when plants are close together, when they are the same variety, and when they come from the same seed producer. So, unassuming and well-intentioned shoppers at stores like Wal-Mart, Stop and Shop for instance, picked up seemingly healthy plants. Then, brown lesions with white fuzzy-looking spores popped up almost simultaneously across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions as the weather turned unseasonably moist and cool.
The average shopper might never know that this occurred; they might never know that for farmers, this blight means a loss of up to 25% of their income for the year. Few people and few professions are so reliant on and victim of the weather. Lawyers can still defend a client if there is a drought, surgeons can still carry out transplants if there is a flood, and teachers can still explain the symbolism in "The Catcher in The Rye" if the temperatures dip. But farmers are tied inextricably to nature.
While this blight is certainly not good news for farmers or even for home gardeners trying to go as local as local food gets, it may be a lesson in reconnecting to our food. If we are forced to pay more for a tomato, or gasp, go without tomatoes for a short while, maybe it will help us learn that what we eat actually comes from, you guessed it, the ground!
