What Is Local?

Saying you're going to "eat local" is all well and good, but what counts as local? In a large, semi-arid state with few population centers, I have to figure out how widely to cast my net. No matter where you live, this matter of arriving at an appropriate definition is crucial and must vary from place to place, depending on the productivity of local land and the activity of the local economy.

My community food coop, for instance, defines their "local" product label to mean that the food is produced within 300 miles. That seems a bit far to me-- perhaps more "regional" than "local"-- but not absolutely absurd given the landscape I live in, and the fact that it's around 100-200 miles between cities here. There is at least one direction (east) in which I can drive 300 miles and still be in the same state.

View Larger Map

On the other hand, in the Northeast, where I come from originally, 300 miles would be a ridiculously long distance to consider local. Is Boston-to-Philadelphia "local"? Yet it is only a few miles farther than Bozeman-to-Miles City.

Definitions:

Here's a great post from the Wedge Natural Foods Coop in Minneapolis, struggling with the same issue. Writer Barth Anderson considers and rejects a number of problematic definitions of "local" eating, including the "100-mile diet," simply in-state, and within a day's round-trip drive, before settling on a very broad criterion: "any local food company or local grower located in Minnesota or a state bordering ours" (so that would be Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin-- and what about Manitoba and Ontario?). Note also that "local food company or local grower" includes foods that are processed locally out of ingredients that may not be local-- another problem requiring a decision.

Then Anderson goes on to remark that, for him, "Cargill is local," a troubling complication. What if you live near a Coca-Cola bottling plant? Does that count? The fact is, "local," however it is defined, only goes so far as a food ethic.

The Farm-to-Dartmouth project also notes how difficult it is to define local, but here's what they came up with for their purposes:

For many people, local food is more easily defined by what it is not than what it is. Local food, by this classification, is not mass-produced food shipped from distant regions at the expense of taste and nutrition. Often equated with greater nutritional, social, and ecological benefits, local food is simply that which is produced by farmers living in a region geographically intimate enough to be called a community. For the sake of this project, the definition of local is that approximately 80% of the food is produced in the 69 towns of the Greater Upper Valley using ingredients produced in that same area, and the remaining 20% is produced in the bi-state region of Vermont and New Hampshire.

Caveats:

The Wikipedia page on the local food movement raises more problems:

Where local food is determined by the distance it has traveled, the wholesale distribution system can confuse the calculations. Fresh food that is grown very near to where it will be purchased, may still travel hundreds of miles out of the area through the industrial system before arriving back at a local store. [...]

Often, products are grown in one area and processed in another, which may cause complications in the purchasing of local foods. In the international wine industry, much "bulk wine" is shipped to other regions or continents, to be blended with wine from other locales. It may even be marketed quite misleadingly as a product of the bottling country.

Finally, this final section of a report from the Hartman Group, a market research group that looks at underlying motives and trends in consumer behavior, should serve as a warning that big corporations are already seeking to play on our desire to “buy local.”

In the industry, there is a belief that you can only be local if you are a small and authentic brand. This isn't necessarily true; big brands can use the notion of local to their advantage as well. There are a lot of ways for a big brand to be local by having limited edition and/or seasonal products. A nutrition bar, for example, could have a nut in it that is grown in a certain area that gives it better taste perceptions.

It is important for manufacturers, marketers and retailers to understand that quality markers, such as use of local ingredients and narratives of local production and origin, are factors that resonate most strongly with consumers when it comes to determining what is authentically local.

As local continues to evolve in sophistication as a marketing concept, the ultimate success of the "buy local" message (e.g., selling more products, increased revenues, higher profit margins, improved quality image, repeat purchases, etc.) and its sustainability over time depends on any number of cultural, societal and lifestyle factors, all covered by this overarching principle: you can’t fake authenticity.

“Taste perceptions”???

More and better definitions:

Gary Paul Nabhan, whose tremendous 2001 book Coming Home to Eat detailed his own local-eating experiment (within 200 miles of his home in Flagstaff, AZ), writes in his blog post "Deepening Our Sense of What Is Local and Regional Food" that-- now that "eat local" is becoming a popular concept and catchphrase-- "It is time that we deepen our sense of what we mean by local and regional, offer others better reasons as to why these concerns matter, and steadfastly resist any pressure to endorse simplistic formulas such as a 100-mile diet or an in-state diet."

His own list of what it means to promote local eating includes:

1. Local means from a farm, ranch or fishing boat that is locally-owned and operated, using the management skills and the labor of local community members. [...]

2. A regional food is one that has been tied to the traditions of a particular landscape or seascape and its cultures for decades if not for centuries. [...] Yes it may be produced five miles from your home and thereby reduce food miles, but its seeds are not saved and adapted to local or regional conditions, they are bought from afar every year.

3. The miles a food travels (“food miles”) must be placed in the size and volume of the mode of transport, its source of fuel, and its frequency of travel. Using biodiesel in a larger truck may be more efficient, and leave less of a carbon footprint than using leaded gas in an old clunker.[...]

4. On-farm energy and water use matter. [...]

5. Other on-farm inputs matter just as much. Where are the sources of hay for livestock, compost for garden crops or nitrogen for field crops? They should be locally if not regionally-sourced. [...]

6. Fair-trade with other cultures, localities and regions is fair game. Circumvent the globalized economy for the items you truly need from other regions by establishing fair-trade exchanges. [...]

7. Invest in the foods unique to your region that cannot or should not be grown anywhere else.

Sure, some of the above are a tall order to fill. But remembering that we're choosing local foods for reasons beyond simply saving fuel is important. Nabhan's list provides a number of reasons why Cargill, no matter where you live, is not local.

So, the question remains, of course: how should I define "local"? And should I define it at all, or simply follow my instincts towards the best available choices?

I am open to suggestions.

Let the Locavory Begin

I've mentioned this to several people now. But I'd yet to make a public commitment. Here goes:

My daughter and I are “eating local” (with a couple exceptions), for a year, starting June 3 with the opening of the first of two local farmer’s markets.

In this, as many will recognize, we are inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful and immensely popular Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I also raved about here.

It’s also the case that, as my shopping habits have changed over the past few years, I have naturally increased my use of local products. The majority of my vegetables this year have come from a farm called Gallatin Valley Botanical, where I have a CSA share; I ate them fresh during the summer, and froze some for winter (I’m still eating them now, at the end of February). My bread and flour, and my milk and cream and eggs and butter, have long come from local or regional producers. I don’t buy much meat, but we have excellent local beef, buffalo, and other meats in Montana, and I try to choose grassfed products from nearby ranches. In various seasons, I can and do get local apples, dried beans, vegetable oil, honey, and other products.

But I’ve always approached food shopping with list in hand, the question of what do I need/want? having been considered ahead of time, and the choice amounting to which version to purchase (local? organic? cheapest? etc.). Because, in our American market environment (with the exception of certain “food desert” areas), everything on the list is virtually certain to be available. Years ago, when I did a lot of exotic cooking, yet thought little of seasonality or food transportation distance, I’d be flummoxed on the rare occasion when some fresh produce item demanded in a recipe was not to be found in any of my several nearby supermarkets. It was scandalous, because anomalous, when nobody happened to have lemongrass, or Belgian endive.

The real problem, as Kingsolver and others have made clear, is not that it is difficult to adequately feed oneself on mostly local products. The challenge is to change one’s mental habits so that one embraces the food available, then figures out how to best and most deliciously use it. This requires abandoning the idea, I think, pushed by many American personal-budget gurus, that meal planning must come before shopping. When endeavoring to eat locally, we need to take an approach that should come more naturally to us as a formerly foraging species: go out and gather what there is, whether from our own garden, a nearby farm, or a market. If we live in an area with a cold season, then we have to gather more than we immediately need; avoiding waste means preserving the excess, not shopping according to a rigorous plan.

After all, which gives me more joy? Buying a jar of spaghetti sauce, a bag of pasta, and a pie slice of parmesan cheese in preparation for a dinner when we will surely have spaghetti (again)? Or receiving those unsolicited boxes of tomatoes, or root vegetables, or apples, that our elderly neighbors used to leave on our doorstep, overflow from their productive back yard, and musing over “how to use them up”? Even leaving aside all questions of sustainability, the first task is simple, carefully-delineated, impersonal, and more or less the same from week to week; the second is creative, complex, invokes a neighborly relationship, and never failed to give me a feeling of abundance and satisfaction. Potatoes, carrots or apples, yes, I did always have a use for them.

I am positively looking forward to what feels almost like a luxury: instead of budgeting some precise weekly amount for food, if I find something wonderful at the farmer’s market, I will buy it. (Maybe a lot of it, because we only get fresh foods, here in Montana, from about June to October.) I will give myself leave to explore the really good stuff that’s out there, instead of always maintaining a carefully balanced larder of peanut butter and breakfast cereal and salsa and rice and frozen juice concentrate and spaghetti sauce. I will enthusiastically take my friend up on her offer of sharing her yard’s yield of apples and rhubarb and raspberries, in exchange for picking labor and some vacation garden-watering. (Fruit is a northern-climate luxury: YES, I’m interested.)

I bet I’ll eat better than I do now, though I may have to give up peanut butter (honestly, I don’t really care). I’ll be motivated for the first time to fully explore what foods are produced in my area. And you know what’ll be fun? Travelling. When I go to Austin in July, it’ll be exciting, because there will be different local foods there.

There are a few things I can’t give up. Coffee—it’ll be locally-roasted, but I have to have it. Spices and salt—but these are dry goods used in small quantities, and I don’t feel too badly about their transport. The same would probably go for things like leavening. The idea is not to suffer deprivation, but to investigate and enjoy what is available, and to relearn some more traditional ways of food use and preservation.

And, if I’m at your house, of course I’ll eat anything you serve me.

As we are living this project, I expect there will be many follow-up posts about various details.

In Which I Buy Something I Don't Need

Rare is the occasion when I go into a store and spontaneously purchase something that I didn't plan and don't need... except in the sense that I don't really need potato chips. But today I saw a product that stopped me in my tracks. It was made in China from 100% polypropylene, and it smells funny. But that's okay (sort of) because it's a reusable shopping bag with the IGA logo printed on it, which means they're finally getting on board with bringing your own bags, instead of looking at me like I'm a space alien and punishing me by making me pack my own groceries while the conveyor belt runs relentlessly beneath.

I had heard such newfangled trends as reusable store bags were catching on in conventional supermarkets elsewhere, but around here I'd thought it was a coop-only phenomenon. The IGA, where I did most of my shopping in my seriously impoverished days, is by no means an upscale grocery. I was thrilled, really thrilled (and surprised) to see a rack of those bags displayed in a prominent location near the express checkout. $1.49 apiece. I was only at the store to buy a single item, so would normally have used no bag at all, but I took one in support of their nascent effort. I'll be using it again, after all. And will probably end up buying two or three more.

The bags looked really tiny, hanging folded up, but I will also vouch for the fact that they expand beautifully into a square tote only slightly smaller than a paper grocery sack, they appear to be strong, and they have the distinct advantage of that store endorsement, giving people confidence that they're not weirdos for using them. Their boxiness also, I dare say, makes them much easier to pack than your standard shapeless tote, reducing annoyance on the part of those doing the bagging.

So, hooray! And... I'm sure the smell will dissipate in time.

If you go to www.reusablebags.com, you can see a running tally (at the top of the page) of disposable plastic bags consumed this year. Just watch it for a second.

Then, if your grocery is offering reusables, make sure you register your appreciation, both verbally and by actually purchasing and using them! This is one trend that needs, badly, to catch on.

The Anti-Consumerist Child

I went to the mall this week with my 6-year-old daughter, to search for components to this year's Halloween costume. She's going to be a carrot.

The things we were looking for were: orange pants. An orange or green knit cap. Orange face paint. Green pipe cleaners and some type of big green paper or something, to make fronds out of.

We purchased the last two craft items and the face paint right away, and were left cruising the department stores, hoping to happen upon orange pants or hats. My daughter saw a display of fuzzy animal slippers, cute frogs and bunnies and puppies, and pointed them out.

"Uh-huh," I said warily.

"But I don't need any slippers!" she cheerfully went on. "I've already got two pairs!"

Wow, okay. She stole my line. We went on into the children's department at Macy's, which had a display of gorgeous fancy dresses. Not pink ruffles and lace, but sophisticated, truly beautiful (and expensive) full-length satins in red-and-white patterns, or black, or sage green (my personal weakness). My daughter loves fancy dresses, and picks up a lot of them at yard sales with her dad. I stopped to admire them, ready with my explanation that, while they were beautiful, we would have nowhere to wear something so formal.

But my daughter moved purposefully right past me and the dresses, into the recesses of the children's department to search for orange pants. "Mooommm," she said impatiently. I was wasting time, looking at and touching stuff we obviously weren't going to buy.

She didn't even want a snack at the food court. "No, I can wait," she said.

Later, at another shopping center (orange pants are tough to find), she consented when I suggested stopping to refuel on a couple of tacos; and later still she spent $1.99 of her own money on a Halloween trick-or-treat bag at Kmart and asked for a quarter for the gumball machines. She's not an abnormal child.

We still didn't have all our costume components, so another trip was in the works. But... when did my kid become such a joy to shop with? I remember when, at about age four, Store Lust suddenly hit. Everything we passed-- toys, shoes, towels, can openers-- became an object of intense desire. She didn't throw tantrums, but every shopping expedition became an exhausting odyssey of rational explanation. We don't need that. We can't buy everything. We don't have the money for anything except what's on our list. They're just saying that thing is great because they want to get you to buy it, so their company can make more money. We don't need one of those.

But somehow, somewhere, all that must have sunk in. The presumption of not-buying has overtaken the drive to possess or consume. On that day and the one following (during which we still couldn’t find orange pants, but settled for orange shorts and very long orange socks), we bought only the items we were specifically looking for, plus a very few small treats (on the second day, she bought herself a 50-cent lollipop).

It’s a wonderful thing. Except she wants Heelys.

New Footprint Game

There's a new "calculate-your-footprint" interactive game out from American Public Media. (Others were previously blogged here.)

As a calculator, it's pretty standard (and, indeed, I got what's more or less my standard result: If everyone lived like you, we would need 2.5 Earths...). It's far more high-tech and visual than most, though (you even make an entirely irrelevant avatar!). It also collects some demographic data, and allows you to compare your scores, not only with U.S. and world averages, but with various subgroups of your choice (I use a little more electricity than most low-income people, but drive far less than most Democrats).

As usual, I'm surprised by how minimally things like transportation and garbage figure in to my lower-than-average-but-still-too-high score. Those are the elements we're accustomed to thinking about, to feeling guilty about and adjusting. But if I took the bus everywhere and recycled every bit of my garbage (man, I miss composting), it wouldn't change the fact that housing and food are my main problems. This despite the fact that I live in a small apartment in a 30-unit building, and eat a diet that is majority local and/or organic with only a little bit (I estimated 2%) of meat.

Electricity (I'm running, mainly, the usual fridge and electric range, a laptop, a handful of light bulbs-- some of which are fluorescent). Food. When these are one's most serious sources of wastefulness, despite real moderation, it serves as a reminder that large structural changes (in power generation, in food production and distribution) can be far more effective in reducing one's "footprint" than adjusting one's personal habits. Of course, the latter is essential too.

My Lunch at Target

I find myself in the unfortunate position, today, of being in Target at lunchtime, hungry and with a half-hour to kill between morning and afternoon plans. I am with my young daughter. It is not the first time we have ever eaten at Target-- nor will it, I imagine, be the very last-- but nonetheless we do not frequently eat meals of that sort. We are still capable of feeling surprise when the "lemonade" is only offered in diet, the coffee is so pale it must be a mistake, and the hot dogs, which we plan to begin eating thirty seconds later, are individually swaddled in their foil wrappings.

I am still capable of feeling a numb horror when I look down at the table, littered with the inedible remains and packagings of a meal we took no pleasure in, and gather up a double handful of trash-- two hot dog foils, a coffee cup, a wasted lemonade cup with the half-inch of lemonade I poured before I read the label, the juice box I asked for in replacement, a paper ice cream dish, a plastic spoon, a potato chip bag, ketchup and mustard packets, two napkins-- and stuff it all in the garbage can, twenty minutes after we began eating.

Don DeLillo in White Noise:

"We wanted to eat, not look around at other people. We wanted to fill our stomachs and get it over with. We didn't need light and space. We certainly didn't need to face each other across a table as we ate, building a subtle and complex cross-network of signals and codes. We were content to eat facing in the same direction, looking only inches past our hands. There was a kind of rigor in this."

Actually consumed:

• 2 small hot dogs, contents unknown, with buns, ketchup and mustard-- minus half of one dog (the meat only) that went uneaten.
• One very small scoop of Dreyer's (= Nestlé) strawberry ice cream.
• 1 portion Archer Farms (Target store brand) potato chips.
• 12 oz. weak Colombian coffee, doctored with 1/2 oz. Coffeemate
• 6 oz. fruit punch

My daughter asks me why "Thank You" is printed on the mouths of so many trash cans. I explain that they are thanking us for not simply leaving our filthy messes strewn about the tables for others to pick up. But in a sense, of course, we are.

The Footprint Calculator

In the sidebar there is a link to "Calculate your ecological footprint." This is a quiz, designed several years ago in honor of Earth Day, which asks you a fairly small number of simple questions about your lifestyle and activities, then gives a rough estimate of the planetary resources you are using, calculated in acreage.

Obviously only a rough estimate is possible, but doing the estimate is nevertheless a valuable heads-up, especially for Americans and others accustomed to a high median standard of living. For instance, my calculated footprint, 11 acres, is less than half the average footprint for my countrymen and women (24 acres). Hooray for me!

"If everyone lived like you," the calculator tells me, "we would need 2.6 planets."

Oh.

Your results are also broken down into several categories, and the numbers can be instructive. For instance, I often agonize mentally over the decision to walk or drive across town; saving energy this way is also a matter I discuss with my child. The calculation, however, suggests that transportation is the least of our worries. Only half an acre out of the 11 represents mobility costs, and that includes one plane trip per year and a long cross-country drive or two. Much more significant are my housing and food impacts. I live in a small apartment (2 residents), eat little meat compared to most Americans, and approximately half (I guessed) of my food supply is locally-produced (local farm vegetables, local dairy products, local eggs, locally-baked bread made with locally-grown wheat, local beef and buffalo... but then there is the prepared stuff, the coffee, the juice, the cereal, the wine, the chips... I'm trying to be realistic).

So. Good so far, but not good enough. And I should worry less about my car, and more about turning down the heat in the winter, switching to compact fluorescent lighting, buying cheese made here instead of in Minnesota.

If you do a calculation like this every once in a while, you can also see how the numbers change. I did this same quiz a year or two ago. My footprint is larger now. What changed?-- my housing, I think. Dividing our former family into two residences simply requires more resources-- as is indeed obvious to anyone who's been through it. Food for thought: family size matters. While having fewer children in order to reduce population growth, for instance, is an admirable personal or national aspiration, smaller families will only prove an ecological boon if they do not simply appropriate the same amount of living space formerly occupied by larger families.

Some other calculators, if you enjoy playing with the details:

The Inconvenient Truth CO2 impact calculator. Note that "average" here means U.S. average.

The World Wildlife Fund Footprint Calculator. It's more detailed than the two above; on the other hand, it is difficult to use at first (it does not appear to register your choices-- be patient and trusting, it really is working) and is clearly designed for a British audience (if you need help with unit conversions, I recommend onlineconversions.com). There is also a strange moment in the middle where it appears to turn into a marketing survey.

The Lifecycle Climate Footprint Calculator, from the Berkeley Institute of the Environment. Also check out the U.S. average vs. world average bars at the bottom of the page. This one is very cool, once you get used to the click-and-drag interface-- the calculator provides the national average answers in the spaces provided, and then you drag the numbers upward or downward to represent your own lifestyle. Highly recommended. Interestingly, my results from this much more detailed calculator were generally similar to those from the simple Earth Day calculator: 2.3 times the world average greenhouse gas emissions (in this case), but less than half the U.S. average.

Enjoy. Or quake with guilt, or both.

[update] related link: A. Siegal, over at Daily Kos, gives us a list of resources for talking to children about global warming.