Current issue of "The Nation" focuses on Food & New Orleans

Green Shoots in New Orleans

A frustrating quest for food security has led some residents to grow their own.

Margarine, margarine, ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.’” Poppy Tooker recalls the months of food shortages after Hurricane Katrina ripped the Gulf Coast apart. “I could not believe there was no butter.” According to the New Orleans native, one unfortunate but little-noticed repercussion of the storm was the demise of dairy. As a food activist, she understood the heavily industrial process of butter churning, preservation, shipping and storage. But in light of her city’s rich culinary history—fresh collards, crawfish étouffées and endless okra—the dearth was particularly jarring. After “a concentrated three-day search,” Tooker found her grail—in Baton Rouge, more than an hour’s drive out of the ruined city. From August 2005 until, well, now, thousands of city residents have been living what Pamela Broom, a food-justice advocate also born and raised in New Orleans, calls “the fron tier life.” Richard McCarthy, who reopened one of his farmers’ markets just ten weeks after Katrina, recalls the shortages with a grim look. Privileged shoppers trucked to nearby Jeffer son Parish for essentials, but “there just wasn’t enough anything,” he says. Early returnees picked through food bins alongside National Guardsmen with automatic weaponry.

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