To Eat Local

Eating local may not be the cure for all the worlds sufferings, but it may just be the way forward for our industrialized and extremely fragile food supply. All it requires is some minor sacrifices and concerted effort on the part of you, the consumer.

The very idea of eating local is an idea as old as agriculture itself. Before the grand industrialization and commoditization of agriculture, people ate the foods they could grow themselves or could trade for easily. Contrasted to today when many consumers eat and drink products that may have a complicated, global trotting supply chains that are often fraught with inefficiencies.

The answer for some purists may be grass roots movements like moving to agricultural communes or even turning your entire backyard or a public space into "urban farms". But for the majority of the population, eating local can take the form of buying branded or unbranded produce and groceries carrying the label "locally produced".

But what constitutes "local"?

The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 includes a definition, with "locally" and "regionally" grouped together and defined as:

‘‘(I) the locality or region in which the final product is marketed, so that the total distance that the product is transported is less than 400 miles from the origin of the product; or
‘‘(II) the State in which the product is produced.

This is the definition most widely recognized by fundamentalists and moderate level consumers, but that does not stop companies from labelling produce and other items incorrectly in supermarkets as well as local produce shops.

Now for most of us, the rigidity of this definition varies based on the availability and access that we have. Not everyone has the time to trek across town to a local famers market , or lives in a city where there is a delivery service for local produce and meat. Not to mention, most of us can't afford to source everything we eat from these places all the time.

For me personally, what matters is having an understanding of how and where my food is coming from. I am far from a fundamentalist (I love a good Costco run), but I am starting to understand the importance of transitioning my cooking to incorporate locally sourced ingredients and relying less on the agricultural industrial complex.