Deep Economy Summary
Deep Economy, Chapter Two: The Year of Eating Locally
Darlene Chan-Arias, Krystle Kaye, Cammie Lawson Salvador Pacheco, Madison Quiroga,
English 301
Professor Kathleen Patterson
California State University Fullerton
Chapter two of Deep Economy, written by Bill McKibben, starts out by the author trying to eat food only in season and locally. The point of his experiment was to give him insight on what it was to truly eat locally. Vermont during the winter is not like California and the food was not as abundant during the winter months. The author knew that his little experiment would not change the food system, but he wanted to find out if the industrial food system went down, would he avoid starvation? McKibben goes on to talk about, “The self-sufficient all-around farms with which the colonists covered the continent have largely disappeared” (p.49). Most of the local farmers now specialize in a particular produce just to stay afloat. In the last decade there has been a change in this trend. People are now supporting “community-supported agriculture”. Consumers pay the farmers a sum for the season and then they get a weekly bin of fresh produce. This trend has gone to almost every corner of America. There’s a problem with large scale centralized farming and that is the price of oil, also known as the “lifeblood of industrial agriculture (p.51)”. For now it is working but if the prices of oil keep going up and the climate continues to change that could change the agriculture and the prices to the consumers. The world has gotten so good at making food and making it fast that big companies have taken control of most of it. It is hard for a small time farmer to compete against the big companies. Their prices are cheaper and they can afford to buy people out, sue them for “seed saving” and make all the rules. McKibben writes: "To create all those efficiencies, an awful lot of inefficiencies had to
Darlene Chan-Arias, Krystle Kaye, Cammie Lawson Salvador Pacheco, Madison Quiroga,
English 301
Professor Kathleen Patterson
California State University Fullerton
Chapter two of Deep Economy, written by Bill McKibben, starts out by the author trying to eat food only in season and locally. The point of his experiment was to give him insight on what it was to truly eat locally. Vermont during the winter is not like California and the food was not as abundant during the winter months. The author knew that his little experiment would not change the food system, but he wanted to find out if the industrial food system went down, would he avoid starvation? McKibben goes on to talk about, “The self-sufficient all-around farms with which the colonists covered the continent have largely disappeared” (p.49). Most of the local farmers now specialize in a particular produce just to stay afloat. In the last decade there has been a change in this trend. People are now supporting “community-supported agriculture”. Consumers pay the farmers a sum for the season and then they get a weekly bin of fresh produce. This trend has gone to almost every corner of America. There’s a problem with large scale centralized farming and that is the price of oil, also known as the “lifeblood of industrial agriculture (p.51)”. For now it is working but if the prices of oil keep going up and the climate continues to change that could change the agriculture and the prices to the consumers. The world has gotten so good at making food and making it fast that big companies have taken control of most of it. It is hard for a small time farmer to compete against the big companies. Their prices are cheaper and they can afford to buy people out, sue them for “seed saving” and make all the rules. McKibben writes: "To create all those efficiencies, an awful lot of inefficiencies had to