The Time Has Come For Local Agriculture
Joan Dye Gussow will be 87 this year. I visited her last August at her lovely home on the Hudson River north of New York City. The house, designed by her and her late husband, the painter Alan Gussow, abuts the road at the front. Most of Joan’s energy, however, goes into the narrow lot running behind the house down to the Hudson. The lot is all garden—vegetable and flower beds and fruit trees. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy decimated her garden, drowning it under six feet of water. At 83 she rebuilt her garden beds, raising them a foot and constructing a small dike to withstand frequent flooding. I did not paint Joan Gussow for the Americans Who Tell the Truth series because she is an octogenarian heroically struggling to save her gardens from climate change and its effects on a massive river. I chose to paint her because for longer than almost anyone else in this country she has been preaching the necessity—for human health, ecological health, and energy health—of local, organic agriculture. About Joan Gussow, Michael Pollan, author or The Omnivore’s Dilemma and whose portrait I have also painted, said, “Once in a while, I think I’ve had an original thought, then I think and read around and realize Joan said it first.” The New York Times calls her, “The matriarch of the eat-locally-think-globally food movement.”
An idea whose time has come is a curious phenomenon. What prepares a culture to adopt a new idea, an idea that precipitates a change in values and lifestyle? A change in language, a change in perceived wisdom? A change in how we instruct and raise our children?
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