Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet, is the result of Sarah Elton's globe-trotting search for evidence of people—in cities and on farms, from New York to rural India—who are developing new ways of feeding the world in the face of dramatic climate change. With her eye on the year 2050, Elton suggests the targets we need to hit if in able to feed ourselves into the future.

For this interview, we asked Elton to talk about her writing career as storyteller, and the fictional elements that play into a good non-fiction "story". (An excerpt from Consumed runs after the interview.)

Julie Wilson: There are non-fiction writers, John Vaillant immediately comes to mind, who offer an almost encyclopedic knowledge of a subject. Then there are writers like Andrew Westoll who offer just enough that you can situate yourself as the reader into a narrative based in fact. Biographers, such as Sandra Djwa, are charged with the task of documenting a literary life (P. K. Page) without reinventing it. You're a journalist steeped in storytelling. How do you marry analysis and narrative?

Sarah Elton: At the beginning of my journalism career, I worked at CBC Radio with a few old guard mentors—in particular Robert Harris and Margaret Daley—who knew very well how to tell a good story that also offered analysis and insight. These people made sure I learned as much from them as possible, even if it meant a few verbal whacks and berating. I remember one producer, who shall remain nameless (neither Margaret nor Robert), mocked me savagely when I admitted to not knowing that "streeter tape", those man/woman on the street interviews, required a narrative arc, just like any good storytelling. Now I am the crotchety old radio person who cringes when I hear streeter tape with no narrative arc!

But this old school mentoring process turned out to be very valuable. I am indebted to these producers who made me understand that a good story is the foundation for captivating journalism. The secret is to keep a strong focus. With every detail and quote and sentence, I try to further the story and the thesis. So, I couldn't believe my luck when I was researching Consumed and came across two of the stories I focus on in the book, the story of the Indian farmer, Chandrakalabai, and that of the French farmer, Monsieur Valadier. Both of their experiences are perfect examples of the theory, as if central casting sent them my way. The reader will love them.

JW: To your mind, who else does this kind of narrative well?

SE: I always enjoy Stephanie Nolan's work at The Globe and Mail. I remember characters from her pieces, such as a shoe maker in a Mumbai slum who sells his dance shoes to people around the world. Michael Pollan is adept at this, too—the classic case farmer Joel Salatin in Omnivore's Dilemma. I have been reading Guy Delisle's graphic novels lately and he makes his seemingly naive observations and stories work double time in terms of analysis and insight. I just read his memoir, Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, and I could relate to so many of the anecdotes from my research trip to China for Consumed. Particularly his descriptions of hotel rooms with hard beds that are a shock to Canadian bums!

JW: Do you find yourself emulating fiction writers for voice as well as elements?

SE: If I am reading to study the craft of non-fiction, I'll read The New Yorker. I generally don't try to emulate other writers. Except David Sedaris. But then, not really, since I don't write humor nor do I write about my own life. But what I take away from a Sedaris essay is the ability to make an experience that is particular to him universal in the telling. And his incredible ability to tell a good story. It all comes back to story. What I try to achieve that Sedaris is a master of, is giving every character in his book some universal attribute so that readers can relate.

JW: If someone were to blurb your writing style, however, which writers would you most like to emulate?

SE: I am reading Anna Karenina now and am in awe of the storytelling. But, if I could write like someone else I think I'd choose to write like David Sedaris, or the incredible Jeffrey Eugenides. I also admire Arundhati Roy's writing, fiction and non-fiction. There are many other writers whose work I love too. What I like most are stories that are surprising and so captivating that they make everyday life into a distraction from reading the book itself.

JW: Seems this naturally leads to the dinner party question. What five authors, alive or dead, would you like to take to a farmer's market?

SE: I love that question! Arundhati Roy, Beatrix Potter, Roald Dahl, Lewis Mumford, and who other than Julia Child? Arundhati Roy would buy something organic, grown from heritage seeds; Ms. Potter would have to have a bunny's favourite, butter lettuce; Mr. Dahl would definitely go for some organ meats, sold from a farmers' cooler, while Lewis Mumford would . . . hmm . . . have something grown in the city (a tip of his hat to his urban theories). And Julia Child would fill her basket with eggs, veg, and meat!

-----

Excerpt from Consumed, by Sarah Elton. ©2013. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Visit Sarah at: sarahelton.ca.

Chapter Eleven

From Home-Cooked to Takeout:
A Culture of Food for the Future

The herd was audible long before it came into sight. The sharp ring of the cowbells and the animals’ guttural bellows grew louder and louder. I stood with a group of about twenty other people at a fork in a country road in the Aubrac mountains, a remote and little-known area in the southwest of France, several hours’ drive from the city of Toulouse.
 
We had all come to the tiny village of Les Clauzels on a sunny Saturday morning in May to participate in the transhumance, the annual spring migration of the local cow herds from their winter quarters to the green pastures where they’d spend the next several months eating fresh grass. We’d each been given a stick carved from a thin but sturdy sapling, which I’d assumed was to help with the climb up the mountain, but as I stood there listening to the sound of the cows growing nearer, the eleven-year-old granddaughter of my host, Monsieur Valadier, explained to me that the stick was actually to be used to herd the cows and to help stop them from trampling us. Our job was to stand in front of a patch of green grass—grass so green and luscious that it had to be the most delicious-looking grass from the perspective of a cow that had eaten dried hay all winter—and make sure none of the animals pushed through to graze there. We were to coax the cows to pass us rather than storm the grass, so they would round the corner and continue several kilometres up the mountain to their pastures. “If you’re scared, stand behind the rock,” someone said, pointing to an old stone cross that was about as tall as me and, planted in the earth at this fork in the road, looked like a tombstone.
 
Then suddenly, the bells became louder, the ringing more and more frenetic. I could hear the farmers who were with the cows shouting to the animals. The sound of dozens of hoofs hitting the road rippled towards us like thunder, and then in a flash the herd burst around the corner. Forty large beasts with large curved horns ran directly towards our group standing in front of that succulent grass. I banged my thin little stick as hard as I could and hoped the cows would make that turn.
 
Which of course they did, as they had done for centuries before. And as soon as they rounded the corner, the eleven-year-old sprinted after them, taking up the rear to make sure none of the small calves were left behind. The rest of us stick bangers followed, jogging to keep up. The herd kept a steady pace, and we followed the old country road that would eventually lead us to the fields.
 
It wasn’t long before my host, one of the local farmers, a Monsieur André Valadier, pulled up behind us in an old white pickup truck. On the bed of the vehicle was a cage of sorts to be used to transport the calves that had a hard time keeping up with their mothers—or for any of the humans in the group, some of whom had come from as far as Paris (and me from Toronto) to participate in the transhumance and weren’t accustomed to the hard labour of working on a farm.
At seventy-eight years of age, Monsieur Valadier was better suited to driving the truck than running up the hill with the cows. He’d spent the last seven decades of his life accompanying his family’s animals on the spring ritual, leading the excited cows towards their pastures, tending to the young ones that were hurt or left behind. Besides, the young men in the group seemed to really enjoy their calf-watching duties. When they had to catch calves that had trailed away to nibble some tasty grass, the men would go right up to the animals and try to grab them by their heads, controlling the calves with amazing force as they bucked and fought to stay and eat some more, rather than be forced onto the truck bed and be taken to their mothers. Monsieur Valadier, a tall man with broad shoulders, grey hair, and a big moustachioed smile, beamed from behind the wheel as he oversaw this procession of friends, family, and cows.

I have been on a first-name basis with many of the people I met while writing this book, but I never called Monsieur Valadier by anything but that respectful form. In France, social customs verging on old-fashioned still prevail. Someone my age would never call a person who was decades older anything less formal than monsieur or madame. So, Monsieur Valadier remained a monsieur to me, despite the time I spent with him that week as I followed him around and learned about his life and his community.

And over the course of my visit, I got to know that it’s not just age that has earned Monsieur his title. Monsieur André Valadier is a hero in his community, a celebrity of sorts. Everywhere we went, both the young and the old knew who he was, and wherever we visited, he was greeted by smiling people who thrust their hands into his and pumped his arm. I heard one official call him the “Pope of Aligot”— aligot being a dish of potatoes and cheese made with the milk of the local cows. He has also been awarded France’s Legion of Honour. This was all because, over his lifetime, he has led a movement to save the Aubrac’s farming traditions from evisceration. In the face of pressure to conform to mainstream values and industrialize agriculture in the area, he spearheaded the building of a whole new food system that continues to grow and nourish the people of the Aubrac through the preservation of the natural world where they farm, as well as their culture. And it’s this culture—the terroir of the Aubrac—that is the thread that holds everything together: their regenerative way of farming, the cows, the cheese making, their language, the native grasses, and the biodiversity of the region.

“The Aubrac is a corner of this planet where humans were placed by destiny. Here, we created means for our survival,” said Monsieur Valadier. “Unfortunately, too many people who live in a similar landscape feel that, where they live, there is nothing to do to make a living. That they should leave and go elsewhere. And yet the terroir enables us to create a resource right where we are.”
A poster printed by a local organization to celebrate the region sums up the defiant spirit that defines the people of the Aubrac and their agriculture. It features a photograph of the handsome face of an Aubrac cow, with its wide-reaching horns and doe eyes. On the poster are the words: “The Aubrac, the breed for a country of resistors.”