Downsides to Eating Local?

Forget for a moment all the reasons you might have heard for why eating local isn’t practical or easy, including anything I have mentioned over the last week or so.

While there are some legitimate obstacles in eating local foods on a regular basis and over time, none of those things should discourage any one of us from trying. I, for one, am very thankful for the experience, and fully expect that my family’s local content in the food we eat will be significantly higher going forward.

So, what happens if more and more people figure out how to eat more local foods? Given the well-established and pervasive industrial food system (from seeds to retail), such changes would surely have a significant impact on today’s balance of power.

How would the federal government’s commodity crop subsidies be impacted? And what would we do with the huge surpluses already being produced? Would the increased consumer demand for edible crops give farmers the incentive needed to begin transitioning farmland?

How would more local food impact the 50,000 square foot supermarkets dotting our cities and towns with tens of thousands of items on the shelf, many of which are highly processed and/or far from local foods? Would they adapt their infrastructure to accommodate regional supply, even though their systems are highly centralized? Would they lose sales and be forced to adapt?

Would concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) be put out of their misery (pun intended)?

Clearly, for every increase in local eating, someone or something loses out. It isn’t hard to see that the massive multinational corporations found at each stage of the food chain, along with their owners and investors, would be the biggest losers. Because moving toward local (or regional) food economies decentralizes the power structure and money flow that these entities have worked so hard to concentrate and control since the early 1980s.

So if massive corporations and shareholders lose, then who wins?

Small to medium sized farmers. Regional food producers. Locally or regionally-owned food retailers. But the biggest winners will be consumers, who will increase the amount of healthy, nutritious and tasty food they consume.

Seems like a great outcome doesn’t it? There just one thing standing in our way – money. More specific, the idea of large corporations giving up market share and profits to far smaller local and regional food businesses is hard to imagine, since these companies are already spending tens of billions of dollars marketing their products.

Is this what we really want driving our diet? Corporate profits?

If you’re like me and my family, then the answer is absolutely not, so we will struggle through poor labeling of local foods, we will continue supporting our CSA farm, our above average expenditures at our local food co-op, and participate in every eat local challenge that comes our way.

After all, in the end it’s up to consumers to decide.

Shades of Local Food

Day 4 of Eat Local Challenge Series

While the purpose of the Eat Local Challenge in Burlington, Vermont seems clear enough – help support our local food economy, the commitment asked for is somewhat open to interpretation. Each individual decides his or her comfort level of becoming a “localvore” for a day, the week or longer.

As I mentioned yesterday, how one approaches an eat local challenge will have a big impact on what they take away from it, which is why I think it is important to jump fully in so that the individual or family participating will grow their appreciation for what needs to be done to increase the consumption of local foods.

Having said that, I also talked yesterday about easing into this sort of effort, since the last thing any of us wants is for someone to be discouraged by their efforts. As the week progresses, I can see how that might happen, so I have yet another suggestion for the organizers to consider.

One of the difficulties in eating local is finding local products to substitute for non-local foods people are accustom to eating. Primarily, I’m talking about processed and preserved foods within the perishable perimeter of conventional food stores. Assuming such local products are available, which may not be the case as often as us “localvores” might like, how do you find the products? How can you tell whether the ingredients inside are local?

You can’t, generally speaking, unless the food producer or food retailer brings that to your attention using product or shelf labels. More important, even if you did find such labels, how often would such products be 100 percent local? I doubt often.

What we need to consider are “Shades of Local” determined using three locally beneficial components of any food product: Where it was grown/raised, processed and sold. The ideal product would be grown, processed and sold in Vermont by Vermont owned businesses, AND would be (certified) organic. Next best, and not far behind, would be the same product that is not certified organic. At the other end of the spectrum would be the minimum requirements for a product to be considered “acceptable” for the challenge.

While I’m not exactly sure what those requirements should be, intuitively I would say it’s 100 percent of one of the three criteria (e.g., sold by 100 percent Vermont owned business) and greater than 50 percent of the other two (e.g., locally grown or raised and/or processed). After all, for a regional food economy to succeed, all elements of the food chain need to be healthy and growing.

For this to work, the organizers of the Eat Local Challenge will need to work closely with local farms, dairies, food processors and retailers to ensure visual cues are present where people buy their food. This special labeling doesn’t have to be permanent, although that would be ideal, which should make it more manageable. Perhaps the organizers could get a grant to cover the administrative and material costs.

For an example of how this might look and work, we need to look no further than Burlington’s own City Market/Onion River Co-op‘s produce section, which includes color-coded labels for Local, Organic and Conventional. While it takes extra effort and tighter logistics, my family for one found it very helpful.

(Local) food for thought…

The Power of Eat Local Seasons (v. Weeks)

Day 3 of Eat Local Challenge Series

Three days in and we are starting to hit our stride.

It isn’t that eating local has suddenly become a lot easier. It’s more that we are getting better at letting go of things we had grown comfortable with and have had a hard time carving out of our diets.

For me, my biggest challenge has been letting go of my favorite hot sauces, none of which meet localvore requirements, and grabbing a handful of nuts, typically salted peanuts or mixed nuts, as a quick snack. For my wife it was probably raw sugar in her coffee. For the kids, it would seem that chocolate is the center of their snacking universe, whether chocolate chip cookies, chocolate milk, hot chocolate, etc. They also miss having the option of being able to buy their lunch at school (other than my 13 year old, who you know by now has carved out lunch).

To their credit (specifically my 10 and 11 year olds), my kids have shown tremendous discipline, saying “no” to offers from friends at school to break their local focus: Positive Pie pizza (2009 Seven Daysies award winner for “Best Pizza Outside Chittenden County”…well deserved!), Nature’s Path Organic Toaster Pastries (strawberry frosted variety…a favorite), fruit leathers, Newman’s Own oreo-type cookies and school snacks.

“Just Say No” is taking on a whole new meaning from my family!

The real problem may be less about letting go than it is about using what you have. You see, living in New England for the last nine years has taught us a thing or two about being resourceful. Call it Yankee ingenuity. If we have something that might go bad if we don’t eat it, we eat it. If we have something in the pantry that can be substituted for something we don’t currently have stocked, we use it. And so on.

Which makes the flip-a-switch-and-start-eating-local-for-a-week approach very difficult for us, as I expect it is  for many others. In fact, I’m growing a little concerned that the idea of a week-long Eat Local Challenge, which sounds so good on the surface, may unintentionally turn people away from eating local more often because they get the impression that its difficult. The same thing already happens with many people’s first experience with community supported agriculture (CSA) programs, where “supermarket withdrawl” settles in and people start missing the convenience and flexibility of getting “fresh” produce from large supermarkets.

Maybe what we need is an Eat Local Season (rather than a single week), where people are encouraged to ease into eating local by replacing pantry items with local options when they restock, which over time will increase the percentage of local foods used in preparing meals and snacks.
The season could start when school lets out, to eliminate the “school lunch exemption,” and run into early fall. If you timed it right, by the time people had turned over much of their pantry, the produce harvest would be in full bloom and the Eat Local Season Challenge could culminate in a Harvest Week, which is when participants give their 100% effort to eat local.

Maybe next year.

For now, we will keep letting go this week in hopes that in the weeks to follow we find ourselves reaching for the local options more frequently.