The concept of reducing food miles in order to fight global warming is a somewhat controversial topic within the environmental community. Measured globally, it makes sense that transporting food from one nation to another for consumption can help fight global warming if production and shipping methods are highly efficient in the exporting nation and grossly inefficient in the importing nation.
Of course, such an approach also provides the luxury of having many types of produce in season during all 12 months of the year. My point is this: importing food from another nation because we cannot reform the production methods in our own is a harmful concession not unlike the American practice of shipping electronic waste to China where it can be dumped in environmentally sensitive areas without repercussions.
Put another way, since we all must fight global warming together, we all must become locavores, people who take into account the distance our food traveled when making our retail purchases.
Nutritional science has evolved to the point that we all can feed ourselves adequately during all 12 months of the year consuming food which is grown or produced locally. The definition of local in this case is about 100 miles. I encourage you to adopt this mentality while at the supermarket or green grocer.
Of course, since many of us go so far as to drink bottled water which is shipped from the other side of the world, the move to 100% local food cannot occur overnight. I don’t expect immediate results from you and would like to recommend a very valuable tool to assist in the step-by-step process of going green by going local.
LocalHarvest.org is a wonderful website which assists consumers in calculating food miles and finding local vendors who offer the items they need which are grown or produced within a reasonable geographic distance. You can feel confident in using the free service as a key starting point in coming to grips with just how far your food travels. I maintain that local is better and I have a feeling that you will come around to my way of thinking after visiting LocalHarvest.org
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
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