Food Revolution

Local farmers and producers are changing how mississippians eat with top quality food products.

- Julian Brunt

The echoes of what the Italians started in 1986 are still reverberating around the globe. The movement became known as Slow Food and it encouraged all kinds of then weird sounding things, like buying seasonal and locally grown-and-made food products. It also suggested modern conventions like fast food and processed foods were not really a good idea.

So what in the world does this have to do with Mississippi? The first hint we had of its presence was some pretty interesting things showing up at the farmers markets and better quality grocery stores. Next were a growing number of farmers and producers who were going organic, sustainable, staying strictly local, handmade, homemade, and using any other method or procedure that could be found to grow and make food of the highest quality. These products were made with such care, such as produce picked at the moment of perfect ripeness, sauces, jams, and jellies bottled or canned with only local ingredients, and such serious attention being paid to final results and taste that their quality could not be rivaled in the average grocery store.

If you are already shaking your head and envisioning a modern hippy spouting nonsense about all things organic, please think again. Go to the grocery store and smell one of those beautiful red ripe tomatoes. Now go over to those just arrived peaches and give them a big smell as well. What do you smell? The chances are you smell nothing at all. Do the same thing at a market where the produce is organically or sustainably raised and was picked the same morning it went to market and it will be a dramatically different experience. So what’s the big deal? Fruits and vegetables taste just like they smell!