10-03-2025
Joan Dye Gussow, Piermont resident, pioneer in the local food movement, dies at 96
Joan Dye Gussow of Piermont, an early leader in the local food movement who shared her views and farming acumen with anyone who was interested, died March 7 at age 96.
Gussow wrote and edited extensively on the topic. Her books include "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader," and "Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life, and Vegetables." She was the Mary Swartz-Rose professor emerita and former chair of the Columbia University Teachers College's Nutrition Education Program.
Her focus on whole and organic foods and seasonal eating, rather than supplements and scaled-up agricultural production, shook up the field of nutritional education.
According to Columbia University's Teachers College, Gussow's scholarly interests focused on "Social and technological factors affecting long-term sustainability of the human food chain, with special emphasis on ways of encouraging seasonal local eating."
A famous quote long attributed to Gussow sums up her views: 'I prefer butter to margarine because I trust cows more than chemists.'
She was, as many recounted upon news of her death, the matriarch of the 'eat locally, think globally" movement.
Her backyard in Piermont was a testament to that philosophy, producing a bounty of fruits and vegetables and a living lab where she shared her gardening acumen with anyone who wanted to learn.
While she was a draw at international conferences, Gussow worked within the Rockland community to connect people to the soil and its bounty.
Gussow was a local leader in Rocklanders' push for land preservation — especially the farmland that once centered the county. She had served on the Rockland Farm Alliance, which for many years managed a working farm and agricultural education center at the former Cropsey family farm.
In 1995, she helped establish Piermont Community Garden, lobbying for a plot of land downtown that had been slated to be turned into a parking lot.
In 2009, Gussow helped develop the Hands 2 Mouth Garden Initiative that brought a community garden to the Martin Luther King Jr. MultiPurpose Center in Spring Valley. "It will be a very important experience in their life because people do not know where their food comes from," Gussow said of the kids involved.
Gussow also served as a village trustee in Piermont from 2002 to 2012. On Sunday, the Piermont Fire Department and Piermont Civic Association were among those sharing condolences via Facebook.
On the national level, Gussow served on the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences, and on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Food Advisory Committee, and the National Organic Standards Board.
Acolytes shared remembrances of Gussow as news spread of her passing.
Michael Pollan, author of several books about food and health, including "Your Mind on Plants" and "The Omnivore's Dilemma," called her "one of my heroes and teachers" on X.
Gussow had been active in the community based at Stone Barns Center For Food & Agriculture, which is the home of the Michelin-star-graced restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns.
That's where Irene Hamburger, former vice president of Blue Hill, first met Gussow. They became friends. Gussow, she said, was hardly a food snob. Hamburger recalled how Gussow would go every Saturday to Canzona's Market, a local deli in Piermont, to get her favorite breakfast sandwich, which was eggs and pepper jack cheese on an onion roll with hot sauce.
Gussow, before her foray into nutritional studies, had a stint at Time magazine where she interviewed Edward Hopper. Years later, she and her spouse, artist and environmentalist Alan Gussow, joined the effort to rescue Hopper's boyhood home in Nyack and transform it into the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center.
Gussow was among the food leaders to contribute to "Letters to a Young Farmer," a compilation of essays published in 2017 by The Stone Barns Center For Food & Agriculture.
She wrote: "You were born into a world in which very few people had a farmer in their life and 'food' was a category that includes tens of thousands of items with no recognizable relationship to the soil. I doubt very much that your family raised you to be a farmer .... Maybe you'll be standing at your stall in a local farmers market and a grown woman (with) tears in her eyes will come and say she hasn't seen a sweet potato like yours since she pulled one out of the ground forty years earlier. So although you're unlikely to make a lot of money doing what you love, you're very likely to make a lot of people happy. Thank you for feeding us."
Joan Dye was born in Alhambra, California in 1928. She earned an undergraduate degree from Pomona College. She later earned post-graduate degrees in nutrition education at Columbia University's Teachers College, where she went on to be a professor and department chair. Her course, nutrition ecology, was highly regarded.
Her husband died in 1997. She is survived by two sons and their families.
Celebration of Life services in Piermont and at Teachers College are being planned for late spring.
Individuals are invited to send reminiscences on what Joan meant to you, as well as any photos.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Joan Dye Gussow, matriarch of local food movement, dies at 96
