The 100-Foot Diet (food travels avg. 1500 miles using 17X more fossil fuel)

[Shallah Kali]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/03/24/74

Unless you managed to lock yourself in your kitchen pantry for the past year, you will have heard that road-weary foods are out and fresh, local ones are in. Yet, different people have different ways of defining local. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, has said that local foods are those sourced within a 200 mile radius of a store. Nutritionist and author Joan Dye Gussow has defined local more poetically as “within a day’s leisurely drive of our homes”.

{snip}

There are certainly easier paths to delicious, local foods than the one that passes through the backyard garden, but none more direct or more satisfying. It is a path, however, that fewer and fewer Americans are willing to tread. According to latest data from US Department of Agriculture, home food production hit an all time low last year and was down a full 20% from the previous year. Meanwhile, despite recent trends, foods in the US have never traveled farther than they do now, over 1500 miles on average from field to fork, using up to 17 more fossil fuels than foods sourced locally.

With the gardening season and climate change both upon us, I am encouraging people who have a little bit of land - be it a vacant lot, a yard, or a well-tilled window box - to use it in the service of their planet and their gastronomy. Last year, a Vancouver couple made the international news by eating a ‘100-mile diet” for a year. In a globally-warmed world with a growing population, we’ll need even more ambitious experiments in local eating in the future and slower interpretations of “slow food”.

My goal this growing season is to meet one third of my family’s annual vegetable needs through our modest suburban plot. That may not sound like much, but a lot of little kitchen gardens can add up to a small farm in urban and suburban areas where farmland is either not available or affordable.

Found this link on EnergyBulletin http://energybulletin.net/27846.html

The author is founder of Kitchen Gardeners International
http://www.kitchengardeners.org

[nosmokes]

1. thanks for the post!

we all need to get local,organic and fair trade. and there's nothing like growing your own. nothing beats an ear of corn right of the stalk standing inthe field. sweet as candy. or a fresh home grown tomato.

[Shallah Kali]

2. I love fresh tomatos & peas straight out of the pod. This year I am finally going to plant some

even if I can only grow a little that little bit hasn't traveled halfway across the world to reach me. Additionally I know exactly what has been done to that food. no fears about toxic pesticides and chemicals.