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1-Page Summary of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Overall Summary
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a book that tells the story of one family’s year-long food experiment. It also touches on themes about sustainability and farming in America. The author Barbara Kingsolver wanted to find out what it would be like if she only bought food from local farmers and growers who she knew personally or those within her community.
Kingsolver’s family decided to grow their own food because of increasing concerns about the environment and the fuel waste that occurs in today’s conventional farming. They also wanted to avoid processed foods, which they felt were bad for them, and they didn’t like how animals are treated on factory farms. In addition, everyone in the family was involved in growing and preparing food throughout the year.
Most of the book was written by Barbara Kingsolver. However, her husband and elder daughter also contributed essays to the book. This is like a family experiment in eating local foods.
As the year progresses, the family learns lessons. For example, they find that some of their worries do not come true; in fact, there is still plenty of food available during winter months. Kingsolver uses her own family’s experiences to explore larger issues in society and how we should live our lives. She shows how difficult it is for people to change their eating habits and become more self-sufficient by revealing how much waste there is in the current food industry due to transportation practices.
The family who wrote this book wants to educate their audience about food culture in the United States. They also want to inspire change and lead the way by including a roadmap for others to follow, even if they don’t live on a farm like the authors do. Recipes, easy produce guides, and tips make it both memoir and manual for future locavores.
Chapter 1: “Called Home”
In the first chapter, Barbara Kingsolver establishes a premise for her book. The family she lives with in southern Appalachia is challenged to eat locally-grown food only.
They moved to a farm that Steven had owned for 20 years. The farmhouse, barn and orchards were there. Their mission was to grow their own food and attempt to remove most of the petroleum from their food chain.
The author then goes into a history of farming and food production in America. She explains that the “drift away from our agricultural roots is a natural consequence” of people moving to cities for work, but it was also caused by changes in agriculture.
During the war, agricultural processes were developed to increase efficiency. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides made farming more profitable. Farmers began growing corn and soybeans in large quantities because they could make a lot of money from those crops.
The government passed legislation that favored huge industrial farms and made it easier for them to produce high-yield crops. However, the food they produced was not healthy because of the way they were grown. As Kingsolver says: “The Green Revolution promised cheaper and more nutritious foods; instead, it has helped make us less healthy”.
Americans don’t think that food culture is a big deal because they believe it’s just for the privileged class. However, the author argues that food culture isn’t meant to be owned by any one group of people and should belong to everyone.
The family realized that industrial foods are unhealthy, but also convenient. They set out to prove that a family living in or near green land can live without depending on industrial food.
This chapter also includes two short essays by Kingsolver’s husband, Steven L. Hopp. The first, “Oily Food,” explains how Americans consume about 400 gallons of oil per year just to transport their food across hundreds of miles. By switching one meal a week to local food, we could reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1 million barrels per week.
