The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food [Paperback]

Ben Hewitt (Author)

Book Description

Release date: June 7, 2011

Over the past few years, Hardwick, Vermont, a typical hardscrabble farming community of 3,000
residents, has jump-started its economy and redefined its self-image through a local, self-sustaining
food system unlike anything else in America. Even as the recent financial downturn threatens to cripple
small businesses and privately owned farms, a stunning number of food-based businesses have grown
in the region. The Town That Food Saved is rich with appealing, colorful characters, from the optimistic upstarts creating a new agricultural model to the long-established farmers wary of the rapid change in the region.

 

Hewitt, a journalist and Vermonter, delves deeply into the repercussions of this groundbreaking approach to growing food, both its astounding successes and potential limitations. The captivating story of an unassuming community and its extraordinary determination to build a vibrant local food system, The Town That Food Saved is grounded in ideas that will revolutionize the way we eat and, quite possibly, the way we live.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Through the last decade the Northern Vermont town of Hardwick, population 3200, gradually evolved into a nationally respected source of local food and began to reap benefits. Hewitt, an area resident and family farmer, previously wrote about the area as a potential example of localized agriculture and economics, especially for a population whose residents' median income was below state average. But curiosity and healthy skepticism, along with his own investment, spurred him to this deeper investigation into the local personalities (and characters) driving the movement, and to observe, participate and reflect upon such odiferous activities as pig slaughtering. The resulting blend of analysis and reflection highlights the possibilities and perils of what Hewitt argues will impact the agricultural and economic future for better or worse. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

A microscopic burg in northern Vermont may just be the epicenter of a new food movement, a scenario that alternately amuses, enthuses, and enrages its 3,200 residents. With a hardscrabble reputation left over from its heyday as a mining metropolis, Hardwick has had to rely on a can-do/can-do-without stoicism before, though the current economic downturn is certainly testing its mettle. Enter a group of young, energetic agribusinessmen—agripreneurs is Hewitt’s newly minted term—whose vision for a revolutionary farm-to-table locavore movement aimed at turning Hardwick’s, and possibly the nation’s, food crisis around has captured national media attention and garnered local skepticism. The irony plays out in Hewitt’s beguiling profiles of the players at the heart and on the periphery of dovetailing associations; from the charismatic media darling who produces heirloom seeds to the craggy erstwhile hippie couple who offer a mobile slaughtering service. Adroitly balancing professional neutrality with personal commitment, Hewitt engagingly examines this paradigm shift in the way a community feeds its citizens. --Carol Haggas --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books; Reprint edition (June 7, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1609611373
• ISBN-13: 978-1609611378
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #568,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

64 of 64 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars So much more than its title! February 6, 2010

By Julia Rietmulder-Stone VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Based on the description of this book, I kind of assumed that author Ben Hewitt was a local food zealot deeply involved in whatever it is that's going on in the "town" of the title, and that it would therefore be a self-congratulatory memoir, more than a careful look at anything. I was wrong.

While Hewitt is a proponent of local food and a (very) small-scale subsistence farmer living just a few miles from Hardwick, Vermont, this book is thoughtful, well-researched, and almost stunningly well-written. I read it in less than 24 hours, captivated not quite as much by the story as by the writing. It's delightful, and worth reading for that reason alone.

That said, the story is pretty captivating, too, but it's a blueprint of how to save a town with food in the same way that John McPhee's "Oranges" is about how to grow oranges. (The writing, btw, reminded me a bit of McPhee.) This is an insightful look into a town and the folks who populate it -- some "agripreneurs", some traditional famers, some true radicals, some completely indifferent. It seeks less to see Hardwick as emblematic of what should be done everywhere than it does to tease out some of the complications with local food that many of its advocates gloss over.

Another reviewer slams this book as being a hippie socialist manifesto. I couldn't disagree more. Hewitt explores that side of the local food movement, but ultimately rejects it, coming out in favor of a very capitalistic view of the whole thing. Sure, this whole thing is about evaluating costs other than those that appear on this year's balance sheet, but it's certainly not about doing away with a market-based system. I'm tempted to wonder if that reviewer actually read the book.

Of course this book made me want to buy a few acres somewhere and live off the grid growing my own food, but more than that it made me think -- really think -- about reasonable scale and the importance of pulling local food down from its elite and expensive status. Hewitt is quite clear that Hardwick has not answered the questions surrounding these issues, and I think that's what's most compelling about the narrative. It's the first local food book I've read that bothers to ask the hard questions, rather than just asserting that if everyone bought local all the time all the world's problems would be solved. Okay, okay, maybe they're not all that simplistic, but I don't see Pollan addressing these problems, whether they're inherent in the model or just transitional.

The one thing Hewitt doesn't talk about much are the ways the government gets in the way of many local food endeavors. I suspect that many of the folks he describes had to deal with some significant red tape to do what they're doing, but he never mentions that. Once he mentions that the local co-op can't sell raw milk, though the farmers can sell it directly to consumers, but he doesn't explain that one of the problems with really decentralizing our food system are the laws that prohibit me from selling you the sauerkraut I've made in my basement. This seems like a pretty big issue to me, since it's a huge barrier for individuals who might want to see how something goes but don't have the capital to invest in a commercial kitchen, but Hewitt never mentions it.

There are others (Salatin) who have written plenty about that, though, so I can forgive Hewitt completely for the omission. I highly recommend this book if you have any interest at all in the local foods movement (even if you've read everything else out there already), or if you just enjoy fantastic writing of a New Yorker-type tone. It's just a pretty amazing book.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Take Food for Granted March 24, 2010

By J. Lamb

Format:Hardcover

I can't start planting seeds in the veggie garden for at least another month up in Northern New Hampshire and so to keep me sane until the digging begins I turned to the new book by author Ben Hewitt, "The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food."

The main thesis of this book is: Don't Take Food for Granted. Oh, and... Don't Take Your Neighbors for Granted Either. If you care about food or about eating in the years to come: read this book.

I read it as if I was gobbling up the first greens of the spring garden: total joy that the book, the people in the book, the work and ideas in the book, are alive. Hewitt documents, discusses, and dissects how the town and the towns that surround Hardwick, Vermont are reinventing the circle of food. You know, the circle that has happened since the beginning of time where we grow food, eat food, compost food and grow more food from the remains of the old food--all in our own backyard.

I admit, before I read this book I was already well versed in the critical reasons why this country needs to change how we grow, deliver, eat, and engage in the food system (if you don't know already, read the book and find out.) So Hewitt didn't need to convince me, and he isn't really setting out to convince you either. If you think broccoli grows at the supermarket and you are content to think that, this book isn't for you. But if you suspect something is wrong with the whole system where food grown under corporate foot is shipped thousands of miles to feed your family, but you can't really envision another workable system or you can't imagine a workable transition from one system to another--well then, this book is for you.

As much as this book is about food, it is about community. And it turns out local food systems are only local food systems because of community. Without one you can't have the other. Not in any real, long term, meaningful way. And most of us don't even know how good community or food can be. But this book will point you in the right direction.

I stayed up all night calling Amazon to see if they would let me give the book six stars, but I kept just being told to push various buttons and I could never get to a human being. Alas, a little like where most of our food comes from: somewhere without a face or a name that doesn't really care about who we are or what we think!

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars nice, but slight . . . February 9, 2010

By aliled VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Hewitt's book tells us of a small town (and surrounding areas) which was prosperous from the local granite industry many decades ago, but has since fallen into what one might call substinence-level farming in the post-war era. But recently, a spate of enterpreneurs has created a new, interactive business model - a seed growing company, an artisan cheesemaker, various people growing organic and heirloom produce, a local co-op, and even something of a high cuisine restaurant using foodstuffs from local suppliers. The synergy between these concerns makes this new business model viable, despite mistrust and dismay from some locals . . . and despite the fact that many locals cannot afford many of these products themselves.

Hewitt's a good writer, but the book is a little short of personality, and it fails to live up to its grandiose title or many of the ideas presented early on. There's no real proof that food has "saved" this town. It's brought some jobs into the area and helped spur many community activities, but most of the benefits from those active in this "movement" have not yet been fully reaped. Some of the most promising concerns, such as the seed company and the cheese producers, are heavily in debt and their success is not fully guaranteed. Most of the town still earns very low pay for the work they do, and suffer the many anxieties of small-town produce and dairy farmers without any huge improvement in their lifestyles. And because many of these promising start-ups are geared towards "export" to big cities where there is a concentration of people who can afford (say) $20 a pound cheese, using this town as a model for local food security - something Hewitt touts - is exaggerated at best.

That aside, there is room for thought in the book. I especially liked the section with the couple who are dead-set against what's going on in town and see it as a sort of betrayal of the town's long-standing traditions. They make some excellent and well-articulated points which contradict the main thrust of the book. Hewitt includes them in an unbiased and fair way, to his credit.

The book's biggest fault is in putting the horse before the cart. I'd love to check back in five years and see what's become of all the activities and goals of the people here . . . this book feels a little premature.