Regional Knowledge Revisited: Growing Western Maryland’s Local Foods Movement

Despite significant technological changes to agricultural practices and the introduction of corporate farming over the last century, rural agricultural traditions and the perpetuation of local knowledge continues to inform people’s connections to the landscape. In tandem with the introduction of new models of regenerative farming and naturally-organic products, traditional and innovative agricultural practices are being touted as offering an opportunity for economic and cultural revival in a post- coal Appalachia. Based on fieldwork, this paper explores how residents of the Allegheny Highlands of western Maryland and the coterminous area are revisiting practices of earlier generations to forge new communities based on sustainable foods systems. While the local foods movement is not unique to Appalachia, I argue that its success can be attributed to Appalachia’s history of subsistence farming and wildcrafting. The most successful alternative foods ventures in the region are those whose cultivators’ approach to the landscape reminds residents of an idealized past. These producers have created communities centered on their farms and products. Together, traditionally oriented practices focusing on regional knowledge and community cohesiveness are key to the success of Appalachia’s growing local foods movement. Taking an ethnographic approach, the descriptions featured in this presentation draw from and complement the work of scholars such as Ronni Lundy, Mary Hufford, Ann Ferrell, Yi Fu Tuan, and Kent Ryden and the practical political and economic efforts of the Appalachian Regional Commission to reveal how folk traditions and sense of place narratives are being reimagined to remain relevant in our contemporary world