The New York Times’ Julia Moskin published a quiet little article this week on the food renaissance occurring in the once-mighty tobacco town of Durham, North Carolina. To wit:

“There was no one on the street at night, just the smell of tobacco drying in the warehouses,” Mr. Beason said.

More important for food lovers, hundreds of outlying acres of rich Piedmont soil have “transitioned” from tobacco, and now sprout peas, strawberries, fennel, artichokes and lettuce. Animals also thrive in the gentle climate, giving chefs access to local milk, cheese, eggs, pigs, chickens, quail, lambs and rabbits.

Now this is what the local food movement is all about. Rebirth! To all local foodies, we already know the benefits a strong regional food system  for our health, for the plight of the animals we eat, the land used to grow our produce and even our rural economies. But for people who aren’t passionate foodies or politicized advocates, this is just the kind of story we need to see reported.

This is one of those “facts on the ground” moments that we need to call attention to, and then not let that attention waver. All over this great but wounded nation of ours, there are cities and towns that are in transition. Old industries have dried up like the tobacco leaves in Durham’s warehouses. The people in these communities are losing their livelihoods, their homes and finally their dignity, which takes a far bigger toll on our nation’s morale than transcends government statistics on unemployment or new home sales. Those are abstract figures.

What is concrete is the kitchen table talk where people are struggling to come up with the answers they need as to what they are going to do with their lives. This Times article points to an answer.

We need a nationwide renaissance where the food we eat not only sustains our bodies, but sustains our bank accounts, our car leases, our retirement accounts. Local foods enriches every community where it has a strong presence. It keeps food in the community a hundred different ways.

Mr. Brinkley, the farmer, says that his family’s farm, and many others, might not have made it through the loss of the tobacco cash crop without the lucky coincidence of the rise in the local food movement. Now, chefs compete over his lady peas, pink-eyed peas and butternut squash—a relatively exotic vegetable here, he said, where the sweet potato was once the king of the winter table.

Then again, “We’re also working hours I never would have dreamed of,” he said, adding that raising such diverse crops and marketing them has more than doubled his workload. He makes weekly appearances at the Durham farmer’s market. Mr. Brown, of Piedmont, said that the farmers there are treated like rock stars, that dogs and babies abound and that hipsters mingle with hippies.

This is the transition I mentioned earlier. We are in a state of transition throughout this country, demographically, politically, socially. Economically we’ve just undergone, and in many ways are still in the thick of, the worst economic crisis in 80 years.

The most startling thing is that Durham’s, and surely countless other cities’, experience with the benefits of local foods actually had to be learned. Or rather re-learned. One of the tenets that our country was founded on was the idea of the citizen farmer. The man who could grow his own food, tend his own land, and sell enough of his excess product to more than make up for whatever else he needed. Thomas Jefferson’s ideal agrarian nation may come true after clearly losing out to Alexander Hamilton’s vision of a strong merchant society.

We’ve tried Hamilton’s way. It didn’t maximize this land of plenty though. It turned us into a land of never enough. How is your community dealing with the economic recession? Are there similar stories where you live? Share them in the comments so that the entire community can see the good that local foods continues to do.

Image Source: Courtesy of Payton Chung on Flickr