#1 - for the month of September, eat only foods grown or produced within 250 miles of Ithaca, NY. (exceptions: salt & seasonings, plus any 5 items that are not locally available.)
#2 - blog about it
#3 - eat at a locavore restaurant
#4 - host a locavore book discussion (the book I selected: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver)
Greg is planning to participate, too, though I'm not sure yet which challenges he will take on. Sophia (who is about to turn 11 and enter middle school) thinks it's a cool idea, and she's game to give it a try, but I'm not convinced she has any concept of what it actually entails. So I'm committed to following the challenge rules for my own personal meals, and all shared family meals, but I'm not sure yet how local her breakfasts and school lunches will be.
Why do it?
For NOFA-NY, there's an obvious customer-base motive for organizing the challenge: local business is good for local farmers.
For the locavore movement as a whole, the rationale includes arguments about the quality of the food, the quality of the local economy, the quality of the social ties between producers and consumers, and the overall sustainability of our food system.
This is a 250-mile regional food challenge, which for an average US consumer would cut the distance food travels to get to their plate by more than 75%. In our case, products from the farmer's market are all locally produced, and Greenstar, our food co-op, puts a LOCAL label on food produced within 30 miles, which makes local food much easier to identify than regional food. If we were to limit ourselves to those sources (plus home grown,) our average food miles would be reduced by more than 97%, and our total household consumption of fossil fuels would be reduced by more than 30% below the national average.
For my household, the challenge is more specific. We already eat mostly local fruits & veggies, meat, dairy, eggs, and some varieties of beans. We already grow and/or process a lot of our own produce. But we have continued to rely heavily on commercial grains and grain products. We avoid wheat as much possible, for health reasons, and local wheat-free or gluten-free products are *very* hard to come by. So we haven't yet taken the challenging and labor-intensive step of localizing our grain supply.
We could simply "cheat" and make rice one of our five exceptions, and continue to buy rice cakes and rice crackers and rice bread -- and we may break down and do that, to some extent -- but my personal goal here is to stretch our household toward increased reliance on local grains, and to explore what changes that would entail. According to the challenge rules, local bakery bread is acceptable even if the flour comes from a non-local commercial source. But because of our family's current dependence on grains that can't be grown locally, and the difficulty of finding local producers of gluten-free products, I'm more interested in the total farm-to-table distance. So: local grain is a lot of what this challenge is about for me.
Partner Perspective (by Greg)
ReplyDeleteWhen Marty approached me about the challenge, it was with some hesitation. She knows that I usually go for low price and low time-investment food choices, because I have convinced myself that I am making a difference elsewhere with the time and money I save. I think I surprised her by leaping at the opportunity for this challenge.
I'm a big fan of the Transition movement (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/) and their general outlook on reorganizing society in less energy-dependent ways. Relocalization is an important aspect of this, and I definitely support it in principle. Still, I'm coming at the challenge from a different perspective.
You see, I'm really curious to see how well we fare given local resources. I'm thinking of it as a "dry run" for a day when energy and transportation are far less available to us. I'd like to know where the gaps are, and start learning about how to fill them.
Local protein sources seem easy, if you're not strictly vegan: meats, eggs, dairy. Root veggies (carbs + lots of nutrients) abound. What about local grain sources? Local (cooking) oil sources? And even more important, what do we rely on right now that we're not aware of?
To this end, I'm exploring areas to expand my own "locavore" challenge beyond edibles... local soap and shampoo, for example. In my mind, this is a "month of buying local" and trying to be aware of all the cases where that fails, and more importantly, why.
Another follow-on thought, about salt. Is salt a "spice" and thus exempt from the challenge? Is it even a food, given that it is mined rather than grown, raised, harvested, or butchered?
ReplyDeleteWe have one of the nations major salt resources here in the Finger Lakes. There was a time (long before the glaciers cut the lakes, I'm told) when this area was covered by the ocean. As a result, about 1000 feet below the surface here (not very deep by today's mining standards) is a significant salt deposit.
Unfortunately, from the research I've done, most of that salt is being mined for use to salt our wintry roads, and not for human consumption. I don't know of any particular reason why it *wouldn't* be fit for human consumption. But while Cargill, who runs the local mine, does produce food products, this mine apparently focuses on industrial salt production, leaving table salt to Morton (mostly in the west). Cargill does have an "evaporative" facility in Watkins Glen, and this one may produce table salt, I'm not sure.
Now here's a startling fact: only 6% of salt production winds up on someone's dinner table. In contrast, 66% of the salt that is mined is used on highways. Highway and water softener salt together add up to 79% of the market... and that salt doesn't need to be as clean as "food grade" salt. So it stands to reason that most of the companies focus their efforts on the easy business: rock salt. Dig it up and sell it. [Primary source here is the industry association web site: http://www.saltinstitute.org/]
The good news (from an energy-descent perspective) is that we have salt locally, and if and when we reach a point of not needing to keep the roads cleared for cars and tractor-trailers, we should have plenty of local salt left for eating.
Also worth studying are the "mineral" leavening ingredients such as baking soda. First used for baking in NY, it is produced from sodium carbonate ("washing soda"). The main production process for the latter is named for Solvay, NY -- 61 mi -- where it was produced until 1986. (Right now, it is cheaper to mine sodium carbonate from natural deposits in Wyoming.) In its short form, you start with salt water, limestone, and ammonia, and you can get both washing soda and baking soda as byproducts.
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to collect and grow yeast, and to make soap, so maybe baking soda and washing soda aren't that critical!
I saw the details on the discussion group, but now I can't find them. I'd like to attend. I wonder if posting the details as an event on the IthaCan website might increase the number of people attending?
ReplyDeleteI'm also signed up for the Challenge, and I'd like to host a discussion group focused on the UCBerekely course, Edible Education. The lectures are being posted on YouTube. The first was by the founder of the Slow Food movement and the second, On Food and Life (my paraphrase, I'm not sure of the actual title) was given by Peter Sellers, who I know best as an artistic director at the Metropolitan Opera.
I've suggested meeting on September 29 between 6:30 and 8:00. I'm offering beverages, and depending on how many people are interested, I'm open to making dinner, doing a dish to pass, or changing the date or time, or whatever makes it easy for folks to attend. Either way, I think the course is worth watching.
@Nancy: I'd love to see the UCBerkeley lectures. I looked for them on YouTube, but I couldn't tell what was what. They're long; I think I would need to schedule a child-free time to be able to focus. Let me know time & place if you do host a viewing.
ReplyDelete