50 Reasons to Eat & Grow Local Food

Reason #1

Eating and Growing local food allows us to truly celebrate the harvest and thereby give thanks to the natural and human processes that allow us to thrive on our planet… and to openly acknowledge that as the seasons pass, so will we. We need to strengthen our commitment to the  importance of leaving behind a legacy of clean air, clean soil, clean water, good wholesome local food, and good times for generations to come.

So…. Congratulations on completing the 2012 50-day, 50-Mile Powell River Eat Local Challenge.

Sammy says “You rock!”

Oh, and Happy Fall Fair and (a pre-emptive) Happy Thanksgiving to all!

50 Reasons to Eat & Grow Local Food

Reason #2

Eating and growing local food makes us feel connected to others who are doing the same, all over the world. It’s a real revolution in thinking and acting upon what we see going on around us:

• climate change and its effects on food,
•  skyrocketing food costs,
•  political turmoil,
• peak oil,
• other environmental disasters (oil spills, nuclear disasters),
• unfair labour standards all over the world for agricultural workers, and
• food shortages/famines that result from all the above.

We’re facing a lot of problems with our current system, but it’s important to note that there are many of us all over the planet, who are trying to counteract and create something new.

Check out this cool link to connect US consumer of local food with providers, via their zip codes! http://www.localharvest.org/

50 Reasons to Eat & Grow Local Food

Reason #3

Eating local food gives you control over an important aspect of your life. You are what you eat! Taking control over the food you and your family eat is a serious first step toward other changes in your life. The feeling of accomplishment and success you will feel at the end of the 50 days of local eating will encourage further changes in your own previously-unquestioned habits masked as ‘life-choices’ (but are really conventions thrust upon us by outside forces).

Here are some examples I’ve encountered; most require something that we’ve been trained away from in our ‘just-in-time’ culture: forethought.

• Walking or biking to work or to do your shopping, whatever the weather.
• Planning your trips ahead of time so you can make multiple stops instead of driving out and back 4 or 5 times per day for single tasks.
• Planning your baking on colder days, and using the oven to cook several dishes at once.
• Walk onto the ferry and take the bus on the other side, or hitch a ride. It’s cheaper and reduces the amount of energy needed to run that ‘floating parking lot’.
• Thinking ahead and soaking beans and rice that will diminish cooking times, and avoid using tinned food.
• Doing your laundry on an early, sunny morning so you can hang it out to dry (at least partially) throughout the day, and taking it off the line before the cool sets in.
• Making your commitment overtly political: Vote with your dollars, your ballot, lead by example and voice your concerns — all year long. On that note, you may want to run for City Council or Mayor of Powell River… you have between Oct 4 and 14th to get your nomination in. Info here:   https://powellriver.civicweb.net/Documents/DocumentList.aspx?ID=1874 ) to help change outdated 50′s era laws (like the no-clotheslines bylaws in certain areas) created during a time when there was almost no consciousness of the problem with rampant energy consumption.

50 Reasons to Eat & Grow Local Food

Reason #4 

Preparing and preserving  local food preserves culinary culture. For example, making your own pickles using the old no-vinegar lacto-fermentation method supports a delicious, healthful and ancient way of preserving as part of our human heritage  (see this storehouse of info by Sandor Ellix Katz, aka Sandorkraut, a self-described “fermentation fetishist” at  http://www.wildfermentation.com/). Teaching others how to do the same is one great way of keeping traditional (and ‘living’) foods, well, alive! In a world inundated by highly processed or Genetically Modified foods that use chemicals as preservatives, to the point where animals will not even consider what we eat to be edible (see note below), it’s important for us to share the culinary culture to show that there is another (and better) way.

According to Jeffrey Smith, author of “Seeds of Deception”, in one of the first studies in the early 1990’s, rats were fed GM tomatoes. Actually, they refused to eat them, so they had to be force fed. And, rats aren’t the only animals who’ve declined a snack of GMOs. Smith says “eyewitness reports from all over North America describe how several types of animals, when given a choice, avoided eating GM food. These included cows, pigs, elk, deer, raccoons, squirrels, rats, and mice.” from: http://healthychild.org/blog/comments/animals_dont_want_to_eat_gmos_so_why_are_we/