The Cultural, Social, and Economic Factors That Shape Our Food System
by Megan Minnick, Purchasing Director
The other day, the word terroir came up at my family’s dinner table. I struggled to explain to my seven-year-old son what the word means: “It’s the idea that everything about the place where a plant is growing can affect how it tastes,” I explained. “Things like how sunny it is, what the soil is like, what other plants grow nearby, and even if the ground is flat or sloped can make a difference in how something grows and what kind of flavor it has. In theory, each unique place grows plants that have their own unique taste.”
The conversation stopped there, with my son looking at me like I might be a little crazy, but it got me thinking.
What if we expand this concept of terroir to include not just the environmental factors that make food crops grow one way or another, but also the cultural, social, and economic factors that shape our food system and allow all of the flavors that are unique to our little corner of the world to come into being? How is this place we call home different from every other, and how does that uniqueness show itself in terms of the local flavors available to us?
The concept is intriguing, but it is not at all simple. Like a local apple with complexities of flavor that defy explanation and the occasional blemish or bruise; the social, economic, and cultural dynamics of Dane County, Wisconsin are a complex topic. I could easily write a million words about this, but I’ll do my best to explain what I mean in the next 1,000.
Flavors that are indigenous to this place
The original inhabitants of this place that we now call Dane County, Wisconsin were members of the Ho Chunk Nation. What kinds of flavors did these people associate with this place? Many of the foods and preparations that were enjoyed by people of the Ho Chunk Nation have been obscured by a history of subjugation and extermination of the Ho Chunk by Europeans and their descendants. However, you can still find some of these foods if you know what you are looking for—and they serve as a foundation for what makes the flavor of this place unique.
When you drizzle maple syrup on your pancake, bite into that perfect ear of summer sweet corn, munch on a snack of dried cranberries, enjoy a wild rice pilaf with walleye or trout or savor the sweetness of roast winter squash on a crisp autumn evening, you are tasting foods that are indigenous to this place.
Part of terroir in the classic sense includes the influence of plants that may grow near a food crop. Drawing from this, our current relationship with native foods can be likened to what happens when an invasive species chokes others out. Like plants being overgrown by an invasive species, many flavors that were once central to this place have now been lost or obscured as the people who cultivated them were pushed out.
Though most of the foods that were eaten by people of the Ho Chunk Nation are now cultivated by people who are not native, it’s still important to stop and acknowledge the deliciousness that Native People cultivated and not to take it for granted. So much has been appropriated from Native peoples, the least those of us who are not indigenous can do is stop and say thank you for the sweetness of maple syrup.
European flavors brought here and cultivated by farmers, artisans, and makers
Here’s where the cheese, beer, and brats come in, thanks to the German and other European immigrants that flocked to this land over a hundred years ago. Our European food heritage is where we learned to pickle the veggies we grow, make jams from the fruits we harvest, and bake bread from the wheat that grows abundantly in the fields around Spring Green.
European methods of farming, cooking, and processing dominate our Wisconsin foodscape. When we typically think of the flavors of this place, it’s mostly from a Euro-centric viewpoint.
That’s not to say that these flavors aren’t delicious—they are! They certainly have a place at the table. They are also part of what makes us unique: a unique blending of the food traditions of German, Italian, Norweigan, Irish, and many others immigrant groups who settled here.
This is the Friday Fish Fry, the bratwurst, and the homemade strawberry preserves, the brandy old fashioned, rhubarb pie, frozen custard, the Italian flavors of the Greenbush neighborhood, and oh so many kinds of delicious cheese!
It wasn’t until I left the Madison area and moved to California for a brief while that I realized just how unique some of these foods and flavors of Wisconsin are. I was amazed at the looks of wonder and disbelief that I got from friends as I described the phenomenon of fried cheese curds—they couldn’t imagine a place where such a thing was a “normal” food. Rhubarb was thought of as an exotic ingredient, not the springtime staple that I grew up enjoying in my Grandmother's delicious pie.
Flavors brought by more recent arrivals
Madison wouldn’t be Madison if we didn’t include one more layer of flavor that was brought here by more recent immigrants to this place. These flavors are so diverse that I hesitate to lump them all under one heading, but in the interest of time and word count, that’s what I must do.
Take a quick walk through one of our stores and you’ll find local products that represent an incredible array of flavor from all over the world, reflecting the diversity of people who call the Madison area home: Madame Chu’s beautifully crafted Southeast Asian sauces; Mango Man’s tangy sweet salsas that bring the flavors of the Carribean to our Northern city; Ernie’s African Kick Sauce, a zingy hot sauce made by a mother-daughter duo from Togo; and the intricately flavorful Indian meal kits from Flavor Temptations and Masala Mojo. There are also Latinx flavors like Cesar’s award winning Oaxacan-style string cheese, Tortilleria Zepeda tortillas, and Tamalería el Poblano tamales. These are all foods expertly crafted by recent immigrants to this place, and they define its flavor just as much as any other.
We can’t ignore the hard fact that a good portion of the flavors and foods of the people who call Madison home are under-represented in this list, or not represented at all. Have you ever wondered why there aren’t more Hmong or Black-owned restaurants in our booming “foodie” city? There is a whole array of flavor that has been obscured by the economic and cultural disadvantage of People of Color in our community. It’s not that they don’t exist (they do!), but the people who are experts at crafting them aren’t as readily able to become entrepreneurs due to the systemic racism that underlies our society, and is very much present in this place we call home.
In terms of terroir, this could be seen as a lack of biodiversity—when only certain kinds of plants are allowed to flourish, so much of the complexity and range of flavor that we might otherwise experience is lost, and even the dominant species can suffer as it turns into a monocrop.
So what is the terroir of this place we call home; what is the unique taste of this place? It has deep roots in fertile, yet often underappreciated, indigenous cultures and foodways; it is nurtured by a predominantly European landscape and climate; and it is increasingly, yet not fully, enriched by a diversity of cultures and flavors.
Let’s step back this Eat Local Month to first simply enjoy the unique and complex flavors of this place we call home; and then resolve to continue to work within ourselves and our community to improve the terroir of this place to bring out all of the possibilities of flavor and make it as delicious and as equitable as it can be.