Eat Local Challenge

Jen, over at Life Begins at 30, is hosting an Eat Local Challenge. She lives in San Francisco where May, her month of local devotion, produces food similiar to an Ontario August - cucumbers, summer squash, beets, carrots, tomatoes, lettuces, peas, potatoes. So I will choose the month of August to eat entirely local food.

Jen's 10 Reasons to Eat Local Food:

Eating local means more for the local economy

Locally grown produce is fresher

Local food just plain tastes better

Locally grown fruits and vegetables have longer to ripen

Eating local is better for air quality and pollution than eating organic

Buying local food keeps us in touch with the seasons

Buying locally grown food is fodder for a wonderful story (I agree - Farmer's markets, CSA food boxes, stores that carry local meats, cheeses and baked goods generally have a devotion to their food that is not apparent in larger box stores. Your food comes with a newsletter talking about the state of the maple syrup that summer or the blight that took out the tomato crop, the driest July ever or the floods that rotted the potatoes. The bakeries that hire local marginalized people in your city. It is a gift to buy a quart of blueberries straight from the weathered hands that picked them while you read your Sunday paper and drank coffee in bed)

Eating local protects us from bio-terrorism

Local food translates to more variety (I agree with Jen - my experience with the small apple producers up around Georgian Bay was two-fold; they had frustration at the supermarkets like Loblaws who wanted large yields and large oversized apples when the local producers tended to have small fist sized apples of an heirloom variety [the supermarket opted to buy big mushy shellac-ed granny smith's from Washington RIGHT DURING APPLE SEASON IN ONTARIO APPLE COUNTRY, and yes, I complained to the manager] but at the same time they served a local community of small green grocers and markets and therefore could experiment and produce many lower yield varieties)

Supporting Local providers supports responsible land development (help keep those who grow our food inspired, alive, in the black, sustainable, able to keep their family farm. Let's enable the farmers to maintain their small local business so we don't end up with a melange of tasteless imported food from large US manufacturer's on our grocery store shelves. It's one of the most social and political acts a person can do - to choose where your food comes from!)

The challenge asks that each blogger, or participant, sets ground rules he/she can live by that fall under the general umbrella of subsisting off a local foodshed for one month. When I get closer to the month I've chosen to eat locally I will write out my own ground rules detailing a) what constitutes local for me in geographical terms, b) what exemptions will I claim i.e. coffee I might choose a Canadian roaster but where will the beans come from?, c) what is my personal goal for the month.

In the mean time, to keep myself busy and distracted from the larger tasks I have at hand in this world, I will also begin documenting local finds (small businesses, interesting landmarks, quirky local folk) who make up the neighbourhood of Toronto that I live amongst. I may not always be able to eat locally (given our dang cold Canadian seasons) but I do live locally and shop locally and converse with those who make this neighbourhood tick. I'd like you to meet them all too.

Comments

[Susan in Italy]

Hi, I agree with you about the virtues of eating local food and I think that disclosure about it is pretty straightforward in North America. I'd love to take the challenge of eating only locally for a month but in Italy (where the produce is fabulous! but the vendors are not of the helpful or informative type) I wouldn't know where to start. Any ideas?

[Daphne]

Slow Food began in Italy so their must be some support in the sustenance of local produce. I would have imagined that in Italy your produce (and meats and cheeses) would be distinctly local or at least come from a close by region. The problems in N. America stem from all of our importation of food to meet quota at larger supermarkets but in Italy at the markets the produce would most likely be local. I wouldn't hesitate to ask a farmer or vendor. Simply being curious about where the food that you are about to buy and about it ingest comes from is a consumer's right. Good luck.

[Susan in Italy]

Hi Daphne, You know, I used to think that was the case. I used to think that in Italy getting locallygrown food was more the norm that the exception. But I've mentioned things similar to what you said to Italians and they unanimously reply that local produce used to be much more common now a lot of fruits and vegetables are imported.