Gussow helped us understand that buying locally grown, seasonal food (and raising it ourselves, if possible) connected us to the health of the land, and to our own health, too. And because of her, we began to understand the deleterious impacts of the industrialized food system—among them depleted soil, poisoned water, and metabolic disease.
She railed at politicians for setting back progress and, as she told us in an interview, “You have to keep hope alive, you have to keep moving along the way you believe in and keep telling the truth and trying to get the word out there.”
In person, Gussow was formidable and funny, speaking her brilliant mind with candor, urging us to see what was going on and to never stop asking hard questions. Luckily, many of us have heeded her call, and in our work and our lives, we continue the conversation she began.
We asked some of Gussow’s many fans to celebrate and remember her with us. For those who would like to share memories or photos through this link, created by her friend Pam Koch, please do so.
Dan Barber, chef and co-owner of Family Meal at Blue Hill in Manhattan and Blue Hill at Stone Barns
To Joan, the professor: You changed the way we view a single strawberry and taught us to trust cows more than chemists.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the writer: Political or personal, your prose was always beautiful and unflinching.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the nutritionist: You proved that it is not merely safe, but sensible (and not merely sensible, but imperative) to keep slathering butter on all those potatoes.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the activist: On health food zealots, always a baffling irritation for you, you delivered a consistent message: Ignore them. Your vitality was daily proof of that simple wisdom.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the botanist: We valued your pawpaws as much as your raspberries. Your green thumb lifted our blue moods.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the cook and critic: You cooked up what you dug. For agribusiness adversaries, you cooked up trouble.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
To Joan, the mother: You have raised all these issues and along the way you’ve raised us, too. Here’s hoping we will do you proud.
For this and many other things, Joan, we salute you.
And to Joan, the hedonist: Food was your medium, but your message was a philosophy of life. You taught us something more than nutrition and agriculture—you taught us how to eat, to indulge in pleasure by way of responsibility. Thank you.
Ann Cooper, chef and founder of the Chef Ann Foundation
“Joan Gussow was truly an OG of the sustainable/
organic food movement, and an amazing thinker and educator.”
Joan Gussow was truly an OG of the sustainable/organic food movement, and an amazing thinker and educator. She spoke at the 1996 Chefs Collaborative Retreat and told the group that some “food” should just not be organic. “An organic gummy bear or an organic Twinkie, organic Eggo Toaster Waffles . . . they just shouldn’t be organic.”
I was so inspired by her idea that we shouldn’t have organic junk food that it shaped many of my thoughts on sustainability. Joan was instrumental in some of my thinking for my book Bitter Harvest, and when I went to the Ross School to build a healthy, nutritious, delicious school food program, Joan graciously gave of her time and energy to teach and educate our team. I will be forever grateful for all she did for food systems and sustainability.
Leslie Hatfield with Joan Gussow. Photo courtesy of Hatfield.
Leslie Hatfield, Senior Partnership and Outreach Advisor at GRACE Communications Foundation
Joan was brilliant, no question, but what drew me to her was her fierce honesty. Whether writing about unchecked corporate power’s impacts on diets, or her marriage and subsequent widowhood, she asked hard questions and didn’t flinch in laying out the answers. She inspired me, on both personal and professional levels, to live a more honest and authentic life.
Elizabeth Henderson, farmer and co-chair, Interstate Council policy committee of the Northeast Organic Farming Association
I came to know Joan through my work as an organic farmer and as one of the first to organize a CSA [community supported agriculture system]. I was thrilled when she agreed to write the foreword to my 2000 book Sharing the Harvest. The first edition came out in 1998, when we estimated that there were about 1,000 CSAs in the U.S. By the second edition, in 2007, that number had more than doubled, and there may be as many as 7,000 today. As a pioneering advocate of buying from local organic farms, Joan instantly grasped the significance of CSAs.
In her foreword, Joan wrote:
“Across this country, a movement is spreading that acknowledges a long-ignored reality: Most of what we pay for our food goes to companies that transport, process, and market what comes off the farms, not to farmers themselves. The people who actually grow food don’t get paid enough to keep on doing it. If we hope to keep on eating, however, we need to keep farmers in business; and if we want to keep farmers in business, it’s time for all of us, ordinary citizens and policy makers alike, to begin learning how that might be done. Sharing the Harvest is a great place to start.”
Joan’s words are as urgent today as when she wrote them 28 years ago. Family-scale farms continue to go out of business, and the United States Department of Agriculture just cancelled the grant that would have enabled the CSA Innovation Network, a network of CSA networks all over the country, to support more diverse farms in creating CSAs.
