Why and How to Eat Local

These results convinced me that this winter it would have been hard for me to eat only produce grown in Colorado. I certainly didn’t. But Bill McKibben and his family did just that three years ago in equally cold Vermont.

They did that by putting up lots of food ahead of time and getting to know the farmers in their area. He documents this successful “experiment” in his new book, Deep Economy.

I bought and read his book after listening to an inspiring talk he gave here on March 26. He says that we need to move beyond the ideal of “growth.” We must seek our prosperity locally, produce more of our own food, generate more of our own energy, and even create more of our own culture and entertainment.

Bill inspired me to act specifically on eating local. Not entirely, but more.

He inspired me to do two things:

1. I will buy more local food. It’s only a start, but I vow that from now on I will buy only food that farmers in North America grew. For example, I won’t buy organic blueberries – one of my regular purchases – from New Zealand or Chile any more.

2. I contacted the manager of the Whole Foods Market here to encourage him to advertise in his store which produce that they sell is local. That is just the barest start, but better signage at the local store level will begin to give us the knowledge we need to empower ourselves.

I decided for several reasons that the store to work on is the local Whole Foods Market. It’s the largest natural food chain in the world. Whole Foods here in Boulder is one of the highest grossing stores in the entire chain. Recently, I saw a sign at the store entrance stating how many of their products in the produce section were organic and how many weren’t (it’s just over half organic).

I thought that it would be great if they could add to that sign the number of local products and also prominently display a sign, “Locally Grown,” about each of the local products. So I put into a call to the “store team leader,” Tom Rich.

Since then we have had three phone conversations and exchanged emails. We haven’t yet had a chance to meet in person, but we will.

I was amazed how receptive Tom is. “Those are great idea,” he immediately told me. “We can do better signage.”

He admitted that his store wasn’t doing well in promoting local products and committed to me that they would promote local produce better. Just before our most recent phone conversation he had met with the company’s marketing manager to work out signs and a chalk board telling customers which and how many of their fruits and vegetables are locally grown.

Tom’s definition of locally grown is within 200 miles of the store. The only store in this area that currently tells customers where specific foods come from is the food coop, which has a sign stating “Colorado Produce” over each of its local offerings.

Buying locally produced food reduces the gasoline used to transport it. The less gasoline used the less it contributes to global warming – to say noting of an outflow of our dollars to foreign nations.