Toward a less efficient and more robust food system
by Tom Philpott

I’ve been asked to talk about how to create a robust, diversified food system here in the High Country.

Now the High Country is a largely rural area, constructed around a relatively small town called Boone. But I’m going to start by doing something odd. I’m going to quote someone who’s probably the most famous urban theorist of our time: Jane Jacobs, who died in 2006. Don’t worry, I will circle back to what an urban theorist’s work has to do with our situation here in rural north Carolina.

In her great book, The Economy of Cities, Jacobs praised what she called the “valuable inefficiencies and impracticalities of cities.” To illustrate her point, she invited readers to consider two examples from Victorian England: Manchester and Birmingham—or as she put it, “Efficient Manchester,” and “Inefficient Birmingham.”

A 19th century marvel and widely hailed as the “city of the future,” Manchester represented a break from the past. What Manchester did that was so new and different was simple—it specialized. The city threw its lot with one industry—textiles. Jacobs refers to the “stunning efficiency of its textile mills.” By the 1840s, the textile industry dominated the city entirely, Jacob tells us. The industry was brutally competitive; less efficient producers got swallowed up by larger, more streamlined players.

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