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Alice Waters’ visit to Greensboro this week comes at a heady time for the local food movement: Farmers’ markets and community gardens are popping up all over the country. The White House helped launch a farmers’ market last week. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced that it will help finance community food projects and make it easier for schools to purchase local foods.

These developments can be traced back in some way to advocates who, like Waters, champion the consumption of organic and locally grown foods. Waters, a famed chef and author, and her Chez Panisse Foundation started the modern school garden movement in 1996 with the establishment of the first Edible Schoolyard curriculum in Berkeley, Calif. She will attend the ground-breaking ceremony for a new site at the Greensboro Children’s Museum on Thursday.

Waters also serves as the vice president of Slow Food International and supports a national campaign seeking additional federal funding for nutritious meals and garden projects at all public schools. Waters will try to advance that agenda among local elected officials on Friday and swing by the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market on Saturday.

Waters took some time in advance of her trip to talk about her efforts.

Q: Your foundation partners with four schools and organizations, and Slow Food USA also is working on school garden projects. How do you feel about what has been accomplished so far?

A: You mean in terms of the school garden movement around the country? I think it’s kind of amazing. It’s been going on for some period of time and I would say that it started to multiply out there geometrically in the last five years. I’m very optimistic and hopeful, and these are gardens that are really feeding the kids in the schools.

Q: If the Greensboro project is as successful as the pilot site in Berkeley, what kind of outcomes can people in this area expect to see over the next decade?

A: That it will change every part, it will affect everybody who works there, and it will be evident to everyone who comes there that something valuable is going on. That kids are not, you know, going about work as usual, or even pleasure as usual. That they are engaged because they feel a kind of vitality from being reconnected to nature and to the ideas of nourishment, that there’s something so basic about it that it’s like bringing people back to their senses.

Q: What is different about working on these issues with children versus with adults?

A: The kids are just so open to it. They aren’t in habits, especially when they’re little, when they’re in preschool and kindergarten and even in grammar school. Even if they have eating habits that are unhealthy at home, they have a willingness to put their finger in it and then they’re kind of drawn in by the care that comes with the food and with this program. They feel connected to something important.

Q: Do you feel it’s harder to convince adults to have children involved in this kind of project given that it’s in a school setting and there are regulations?

A: I always think that’s difficult. There are very few people even in the most enlightened institutions that really understand that this needs to be a priority. There are lots of people who think it would be nice to upgrade the food. There’s a lot of institutions that think it’s important to teach ecology and stewardship. There are lots that even want this sort of green thinking to go into every subject at the schools.

But there are very few that are willing to commit themselves to this completely, understanding that every decision we make about food has consequences. And if we decide that we want to support the people who take care of the land and the people who are raising animals, and the fisherman and all of the people who produce our food — if we want to support them, then we have to pay more and we have to make it a priority.

Q: You’re also involved with the Slow Food USA’s Time for Lunch Campaign. I’m wondering what the next step is, and are you confident Congress will meet those demands outlined in the platform?

A: I’m never confident about what Congress is going to do. I really believe we have a moment in time. I would like to not just have a dollar or two for school lunch. I would like to see it feed every child in this country for free and feed them something that’s really nourishing.

I’m a sort of radical in terms of thinking about school lunch. I think about it in relationship to childhood hunger. I’m thinking about it in relationship obviously to the obesity epidemic. I’m thinking about it as a way to teach ecology and stewardship, and I’m thinking about it as part of a curriculum of every school in this country. That’s the most extreme position and it’s my hope that the affiliates that we have around the country are dedicated to that very big picture of accessibility and democracy of food.

Q: Are you pleased with the food-related initiatives undertaken by first lady Michelle Obama and the U.S. Department of Agriculture?

A: I can’t think of anything more important. She, I think, took the “i.e.” out of “foodie” and really helped us understand that we all care about where our food comes from. She dug that garden. She was there with children and that was something remarkable and unprecedented.

Q: There’s been some confusion about defining local foods, and I wanted to know how you define it.

A: Lots of people ask that, and I’m just learning everyday how to make the definition more clear to myself. We have lots of relationships with people that we’ve had for 25 years or longer, and they live down in San Diego. Do I stop buying things from San Diego and just rely on the farmers who are nearby?

Well, I don’t think so. I think you have to make some exceptions. If the majority of the food is really local, within an hour or two, that’s great. If some things are a little farther, that’s OK because you’re supporting a project someplace that needs your help now and ultimately will not need your help.

We’re accumulating a lot of knowledge globally right now. We’re learning how to cook with what we have, where we live and how to grow food. We’re finding out how to best make use of the harvest. We’re learning how to can, we’re learning how to preserve foods. We’re learning this internationally through Slow Food and it’s a beautiful exchange. I just feel like no matter where we live on the planet we can figure out how to feed ourselves sustainably.

Q: Is there an area or an issue where you’ve changed your mind over the many years you’ve been working on this?

A: I was completely prejudiced about grass-fed beef. I thought it was tough. I thought it was kind of an inferior way of feeding the cattle, that they didn’t get fat enough and they didn’t have that good taste or marbling. I just didn’t like it, although I knew that was the sustainable choice. And it took Michael Pollan’s presentation about grass-fed beef at the University of California to wake me up and to make me understand that the cattle were sick because they were being fed corn. That’s not something you feed cattle and then you have to feed them antibiotics there, and the feedlot, and on and on and on. From that point I said I’m going to figure out how to cook grass-fed beef and we did. ...

I’m a little bit, “if there’s a will, there’s a way.” So committing yourself and denying yourself the sort of extravagance of ingredients that are globally available to us by saying we’re going to see what we can do with this corn that grows here, and this wheat that’s here and this kind of pecan or whatever it is, you become very imaginative. I believe it can really inspire the cooking and that in fact too much can distract you and you lose the really traditional integrity of the place where you live.

That’s what’s beautiful about traveling — is I can go to Greensboro, North Carolina, and I can eat something from right there and I can feel like I’m there. I’m not in Houston. I’m not in L.A. I am there because they fed me that thing.

Contact Morgan Josey Glover at 373-7078 or morgan.josey@news-record.com.