Even More Good Reasons to eat Locally
admin February 13th, 2011
Nearly all the southern regions that supply winter produce to the US have been hit by heavy freezes. From the Digital Journal:
The cold weather experienced across much of the US in early February made its way deep into Mexico and early reports estimate 80-100 percent crop losses which are having an immediate impact on prices at US grocery stores with more volatility to come.
And it isn’t just Mexico - the freeze damage in Florida is also having an impact on produce prices - and will for some time to come.
This is just one more reason not to rely on far away places to feed you - and that means adapting a diet suitable to your own climate. Do you miss cucumbers in February in upstate NY? Sure. Do you need them? Not when you’ve got:
Apples, carrots, parsnips, onions, garlic, squash, sweet potatoes, sprouts, scallions, arugula, celery root, beets, potatoes as well as other fruits and vegetables preserved in various ways. The world is full of reminders that while it is a good thing to be able to go outside your region when you need to, need and want aren’t the same.
Sharon
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- Food Storage , food
- Comments(8)
Agree - same thing is happening here in Australia. I have just finished reading your book - Independence days. I just want to thank you so much for all of your inspirational writing. I was trying to get my head around where to start and what to do and your book as well as a blog that I read here in Australia have been of so much benefit. The blog is http://eatatdixiebelles.blogspot.com/p/get-prepared.html and her and another blogger have just written a Be Prepared Chalenge series over 4 weks that has been awesome to learn how to get started. Anyway, many thanks, Wendy
Also, remember we are able to can foods, so we can have cucumbers/pickles in February.
Well—I’m in Florida visiting family right now (please not to hit me with things! San Francisco’s been warmer for the last couple of weeks). I definitely believe in eating locally. At the same time, I wonder what to say to people whose local farmers have been hit by heavy freezes. How does this prove that they should be eating locally?
Some good news, though—Sarasota passed a pro-urban chicken amendment.
Good reasons! These are also some of the reasons that we put so much effort into growing & storing our own food, hunting & livestock.
We used to do these things for budget & quality reasons. The last few years though I’ve felt an urgency to learn more & do more.
Farmers markets & gardening groups are two ways to build up a local food network. Still working on that too.
It’s also a good reason to have a global food network AND food storage as insurance. However much we may want to grow our own food and eat local, we are fortunate to live in an era where a regional crop failure or a few years of drought doesn’t mean starvation. (At least not in the industrialized world.)
Let me be clear - I think this isn’t an argument for every community eating only what it grows. At the same time, there’s a huge difference in relying *primarily* on other people vulnerable to unstable weather and making them an emergency backup resources. In a localized economy the loss of much of the Mexican corn crop, which is the bigger deal for the actual Mexicans, would make the news (not even mentioned in most articles on the subject) and certainly, we want them to be able to get corn when their sources are lost. But it is also the case in a polyculture agriculture where Mexican farmers grew first for their own subsistence and then for market, they’d have a winter diversity of crops that recognized that they do get freezes - the danger of starvation gets higher when they depend on only market crops, rather than when they are able to grow for themselves.
Sharon
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