Bill

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Excerpted from Bill McKibben's Baccalaureate Address at Dartmouth College, June 11, 2011

"Look at what's happened in the last 20 years to the food economy in this nation. We discovered the idea that we like to be getting food from our neighbors. Farmers' markets have been the fastest growing part of our food economy, and it is now reached the point where the USDA said last year that for the first time in 150 years, there were more farms in America instead of fewer. That most deeply embedded American trend had actually bottomed out and reversed. We're beginning to really understand that those connections are so important, not only for ecological reasons. It's obviously better to have a five-mile tomato than a 2000-mile tomato, not only for culinary reasons. I traveled 2000 miles this week, I know how I feel; that's how the tomato feels also.

"But most of all because it's a different experience. A pair of sociologists followed shoppers a few years ago, first around the supermarket and then around the farmer's market. You all have been to the supermarket, you know how it works. You walk in, you fall into a light fluorescent trance, you visit the stations of the cross around the outside of the supermarket, that is it. When they followed shoppers around the farmer's market, they had on average 10 times more conversations. Not 10 percent more, 10 times more. The only odd thing, of course, is that we've convinced ourselves we've come up with this brilliant new idea, the farmer's market is chic. And this is how all human beings shopped for food until 70 years ago and how 70 percent of the world still does. Of course we like it, it's who we are. We are social creatures."