What is this trendy term “local” all about anyway?
These days local often refers to locally grown food and has become shorthand for an idea that has no set definition. Unlike organic food standards, with legal definitions, inspection processes, and labels, the meaning of local varies depending on who you are – where you live, how long your growing season is, and what products you’re looking for.
A good visual image to help understand local production is a series of concentric circles. The inner circle represents food you grow at home; the next ring out encompasses food grown in our immediate community, followed by expanded rings for state, region, and country. During some parts of the year or for products that thrive in the local climate, you can buy closer to home. At other times, or for less common products, expanded rings are required.
These days, people who choose to eat food from primarily local sources are called locavores. A term coined for World Environment Day 2005 by Jessica Prentice from the San Francisco Bay Area, locavore as a concept was created to promote the practice of eating a diet consisting of food harvested within a 100-mile radius, most commonly, and for a variety of ecological and practical reasons. Because of the growth of the local food movement, the New Oxford American Dictionary chose “locavore” as its word of the year in 2007.
Maybe you’re thinking that to buy everything you need to live comfortably right in your own neighborhood presents too great a challenge. But more and more people have seen the advantages of making the move to local consumerism and have taken that challenge very seriously, especially when it comes to the food they eat. Check out these two books, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The 100-Mile Diet, for explanations and inspiration about why you’d want to give local a fair shake. When you get really serious about it, you might even decide to take the Eat Local Challenge! Visit: http://www.eatlocal.net/