For as long as I can remember, food has been quite significant for me. If you look at pictures of me about a year after coming to the states from Madagascar, this would become evident. Living overseas, treats like McDonalds, microwave popcorn, and ice cream cake were absolute novelties. So when my family moved back to the US, I indulged.

I am finally realizing how my tastes are changing the older I get. Had I been asked then, I would’ve assured that a cheeseburger and milkshake would always be calling my name. But sitting here this afternoon after a breakfast of locally-made peanut butter on fresh baked bread, a morning snack of beautifully ripe papayas pulled from trees of the farm I was working on, and a big lunch of hot virago (made from a grinder sitting not ten yards from me) with vegetable sauce and baked squash I recognize the shift that has occurred. I have become a lover of local food.

In more ways than one really; I love the taste just as much as I love the notion. I have come to understand my bad habits of eating are not only unhealthy, but disgustingly unsustainable. “The food we put into our mouths today travels an average of thirteen hundred miles from where it is produced, changing hands at least 6 times along the way” (Nabhan, 23). This is a big reason why I have elected to work on Discipline Farm. I love the idea of knowing exactly where my food is coming from. I love that my hands touch the same soil that grew the tree that hosted the papaya that I scrape into my mouth.

Auroville has presented me with this tremendous opportunity to eat food that I can trace. I work at the base of it all: the farm. All of the Auroville farms and bakeries and other food processing places take the food to Food Link, a food distributor. There it will be divided up and sent off to various markets around town. When I walk into Pour Tous or Ganesh Bakery or Hers I am assured I can buy food that has not traveled farther than 15 km. That is such a luxury.