There is an "Eat Local" movement arising around the world and it is gaining momentum. Proponents claim that eating food that is grown or produced within a 150-kilometre radius from where one lives can have a significant impact on the health of our planet. But is it even possible to eat locally grown food all year round in our northern country?

I think back to our early pioneers who settled this country; for them, eating locally-produced food was customary. Before the supermarket era, local markets were the only way to shop. Today across Canada we are growing foods never thought possible a century ago, making eating local more feasible and at the same time easing the impact on the environment. Bill McKibben, in his recent book, Deep Economy (Times Books, 2007), states that it takes five to 14 times less energy to feed oneself with locally-grown foods. Here are ten reasons to consider eating more foods that are produced regionally.

1. Fresher, tastier and highly nutritious
Locally-grown food tends to be fresher, often picked within 24 hours of your purchase-and is lush with ripeness and bursting with flavour.Fresh, local produce is more likely to have a higher nutrient content than typical store-bought produce that has spent time in a warehouse or transport truck. When fresh, local produce is available, freeze, can, or dry some to enjoy later in the year.

2. Promotes biodiversity
Independent small farmers are freer to grow a more diverse variety of crops that feature high nutrition and superior taste compared to the agribusinesses that grow a limited variety of mono-crops strictly for their uniform size, precise harvesting time, ability to ship well, and extended shelf life.

3. Less polluting
The consumption of non-renewable, carbon dioxide-producing fossil fuels used to refrigerate and transport food adds greatly to greenhouse gas emissions. According to the David Suzuki Foundation the elements of a basic North American meal travel 2,400 km (1,500 miles).

4. Higher growth standards
Often smaller community farms are inclined to follow organic methods of production, are less mechanized, and more biodiverse, saving energy and leaving a lighter footprint on the environment. "Organic systems have been shown to require 60 percent less fossil fuel per unit of food produced," according to Helena Norberg-Hodge, Todd Merrifield, and Steve Gorelick, authors of Bringing The FoodEconomy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness (Zed Books Ltd., 2002), and also mean less chemicals in the farming process.

5. Encourages use of farmland for food
Each year valuable farmland is lost to residential and commercial expansion. When you buy local, you give local farmers an economic reason to keep the family farm alive.

6. Increases connection to food
Eating locally allows consumers to connect directly to the land and meet farmers and gardeners face-toface. Shopping at a farmer's market, for instance, and meeting the orchardist who grows local fruits or the baker who bakes local bread, gives us a much more meaningful understanding of where our food comes from and how it is produced.

7. Saves us money
According to Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, Vancouver authors of the newly released book 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (Random House Canada, 2007), say, "Most of us pay a big premium for out-of-season foods like cherries in winter or prepared foods like spaghetti sauce, usually with a long list of ingredients we might prefer not to have in our bodies. Eating locally, we bought fresh ingredients in season and direct from the farmer–and we were often buying bulk. We preserved enough food for the winter that we rarely had to buygroceries. Our bet? Most people eating a typical diet could save money by eating locally."

8. Waste reduction
Local growers require less unnecessary packaging and advertising to bring foods to market, which together, are estimated to account for more than 20 percent of total conventional food costs.

9. Supports local economy
Farmers who sell directly to local customers receive the full value for their product, rather than see the majority of our food dollar go towards processing, transportation, packing, warehousing, advertising, and other marketing costs.

10. Sustainability
The underlying problems of today's food and farming systems are but reflections of deeper problems within the whole of society. It makes no economic, environment, or health sense to import most of our spinach from China when we can easily grow it here, for example.

As we begin to realize the inherent benefits of relationships of integrity within local food systems, we will begin the process of healing the ecological and social wounds that plague modern society.

Take the challenge. Whether you grow your own food in your backyard or at a community garden, shop at a farmer's market, buy directly from the farm gate, have a box of fresh produce delivered to your door, or belong to a local food cooperative, there are many, many sound reasons to eating locally grown food. Even eating a portion of your food from a local source can make a big difference for your health and our earth.

For more information about eating locally:
www.100milediet.org
www.davidsuzuki.org
www.eatlocal.org

What about chocolate and coffee?
While I'm all for buying locally produced food, I also see the value of supporting developing countries and village economies through purchasing fair-trade products on occasion. Recently, in the community where I live, I attended a travelling market that offered a selection of imported food items – exotic spices, organic, shade-grown coffee, dark chocolate, Brazil nuts, natural cane sugar – that gave me pause to consider a compromise in terms of my food dollars going beyond supporting my local farmers and reaching out to contribute to the livelihoods of small growers in Third World countries.

Fair trade, with its practice of buying directly from small-scale farmers and producers in developing countries and marketing their products in developed countries, offers customers ethical choices and in turn guarantees a fair price to the producer while promoting sustainable economic and environmental practices.

Cathrine Gabriel has worked in the natural health field for over 30 years. She has managed her family's health food store, is past administrator of Health Action Network Society and former co-host of the Healthy Living Show
with Croft Woodruff. Cathrine now lives in Alberta.

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