The trend of eating locally produced food seems to have begun somewhere around 2000, and its appearance on the cover of Time magazine last month as “Eating Better Than Organic” makes clear that the concept has gone mainstream. Although most of us can’t eat like a Californian when basing our diet on local foods, we can all eat much better by looking for local sources.
What’s “better”? For us food lovers, “better” means tastier, fresher food. The local farmer isn’t going to have to pick his or her crop green so as to keep it from rotting before it gets to market, so the food we get near home gains the added flavor that ripening on the plant provides. I don’t want to belabor the point here, and I’m not ready to join the 100-mile diet movement, but I hope the local-food movement (whose ascent can’t be harmed by the various tainted food incidents of the last few years) causes us all to think a little more about where our food comes from.
. Authors Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon in their new book Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally, record their experiences of eating within a 100-mile range of their home in Vancouver. 
They promote “local eating for global change” at their website and include ideas for people wanting to give the diet a shot. With spring produce coming available, now is the perfect time to increase your local food intake, even if you aren’t ready to go all the way.
Paul Johnson of Perry directs me to a report from the Kerr Center in Oklahoma, titled “Closer to Home.” You can take a look at it now, if you like. I’ll be reading it over the next week or so and let you know my take on it.
Lori // Apr 25, 2007 at 2:21 pm
I love the Kerr Center site. Do we have anything like this group in Kansas?
Janet Majure // Apr 29, 2007 at 10:04 am
The Kansas Rural Center has some of the same goals as the Kerr Center, but I don’t think it’s as well funded.