Happy Go Local

The bag read, "Buying local keeps you connected to the seasons; reduces the distance from farm to plate, and supports local jobs and communities." Slow Food USA, a proponent of knowing where your food comes from, says on its website:

Living the slow life...is about pleasure and taste, knowledge and choice...in finding out where our food comes from... When we shorten the distance - both literal and figurative - that our food travels to get to us, we are participating in the Slow Food movement. Slow Food is about coming together as a food community - connecting producers and co-producers, coming together on the farm, in the market, and at the table - to create and enjoy food that is good, clean, and fair.

Since the Katy Prairie is a working landscape where farming and ranching are still very much a part of everyday life, I've grown accustomed to thinking about where my food comes from more and more. Many of the farms and ranches that the Katy Prairie Conservancy now owns were purchased from families who worked the land for decades. Often KPC leased back acres to those same farmers and ranchers so that they could continue to grow rice, row crops such as corn or peanuts, truck farm produce such as watermelons or graze cattle. Today, KPC owns one of the largest remaining cattle ranches in Harris County - the Warren Ranch - and it has more than 1000 acres in rice, corn, or watermelon production on its preserves.

Every year I wonder which farmer or rancher will call to say that he or she is packing in his farm tools and leaving farming or ranching - that it is too expensive to plant, too uncertain a life. I wonder what will happen if all these farmers and ranchers move away. Where will local food come from then?

This fall KPC will host a special event on its Nelson Farms Preserve. We will have the usual bird watching and nature-viewing activities, but we will also demonstrate how rice and produce are grown on the prairie, how they are havested, what special recipes use ingredients grown on the prairie, and what is special about growing conditions on the prairie. Who knows? We might have a watermelon thumping contest or a rice bowl.

Most of the rice produced on the Katy Prairie is marketed and sold to American Rice Incorporated which mills it and then ships it all over the world.  Wouldn't it make logistical (think carbon footprint) and gastronomic sense if rice grown on the Katy Prairie were sent to stores in Houston, Katy, Waller, and other nearby towns? By doing so, we could ensure a market specifically for rice grown on the prairie - not just because it's great rice, but because it also helps sustain our neighbors who grow it and maintain an ecological system that enjoys phenomenal word-of-beak among migratory waterfowl up and down the central flyway.  That's rice worth paying a premium for because it yields dividends that extend far beyond your kitchen.

Buy local. The geese will thank you and so will your children.