Week 4: 100 Mile (cage-free, grass fed, organic, shade grown, bird friendly) Diet

Well... I'm going out on a limb with this week's topic, as it is by far our most ambitious yet! We've signed the online pact to participate in the 100-mile diet (aka Local-food movement) this year, which means that we are committing to honestly attempt to procure all our daily sustenance from sources and producers within a 100 mile radius of our home.

Why buy local? Some might protest to the idea of buying local, as it is in some cases more expensive, and certainly represents a disengagement from globalized agriculture... perhaps robbing poor farmers on other Continents of the demand for their products that provides them with a daily livelihood? I'm keenly interested in living a lifestyle that is just, sustainable, and one that represents a realization that we are all equally created in the image of God, in relationship with one another, and in a way with the created order - being called to "tend" to the garden, just like our first ancestors (I can't imagine how "subduing the earth" (Gen 1:28) could be construed as existing outside the boundaries created by being created in the imago dei (Gen 1:27) and called to a vocation of tending the creation (Gen 2:15)). Accordingly, this issue of disengagement from globalized agriculture concerns me. It does seem that in the balance, globalized agricultural economies have provided quite a mixed bag - while there are many opportunities for economic enhancement, there are several potential drawbacks which at least mitigate my concerns:

• Economic benefits don't necessarily go to the indigenous farmers, making it rather to the multi-national distributors who encourage the arrangement (go NAFTA!)
  


• Agricultural practice under these circumstances has in many cases fared for the worse, involving: heavies use of pesticides, mono-culture farming (just one crop on numerous acres instead of more sustainable poly-culture agriculture), and heavy use of polluting technology which in the end benefits a small number of people while displacing numerous other indigenous farmers and destroying their natural habitat, soil quality, and water supply in the long term.

For more on this, see a remarkably interesting article posted on worldchanging here, and another interesting series, Postcards from the global food system.

On our side of the equation, globalized agriculture produces a tremendous amount of air pollution, especially in port cities where huge container ships and shipping trucks idle all day long in port cities (i.e. Seattle, Vancouver, and LA). You also end up with tasteless food that's weeks away from when it was picked (read "the End of Food for more on that), has less nutrients, and you have little control over production practices for.

In the end, it seems to be is our best-interests, especially ecologically to put forth a best-effort at buying things that are local. In all honesty, we've been trying to do this for a while now and are really just making an official commitment to try and "go local". I'm well aware that it is not necessarily easy, and have a standing policy to "adapt" these green weeks so that they're actually possible to practice on a long-term basis. With that in mind, our commitment will officially be to buy all dairy, meat, and produce from British Columbia and Northern Washington, which doesn't include all our groceries, but is a pretty substantial start. Here are a few tips that we've picked up on how to more easily implement the "100-mile" diet:

• Find a farmers market: Cut out the middle man, enough said!


• Co-ops: Grocery co-operatives are the best thing since sliced-bread, as they are intentionally customer and employee owned and had a more vested interest in building local relationships with producers, and getting products that are healthier and cheaper. They also often do a better job at labeling where their food comes from.
  Advance meal planning: If you plan a couple weeks at a time, you can more carefully choose groceries that will be locally available, which leads right into my next one...


• Buy in season: Used to be that when someone went to the grocery store, they couldn't get bananas in December, or well... ever. With that in mind, you can greatly reduce your impact by buying and cooking meals that use produce that is in-season... and yes, there are lots of things that you can still use in the Winter. I highly recommend the cookbook, "Simply in Season" (Kudos to Marla for that one) if you're short on ideas.


• Buy in bulk (especially meat) and freeze, dry, and can stuff: We've been buying larger quantities of meat


• Go outside the box: Try cooking some new meals that use vegetables in ways you're not used to - you'll find some great recipes, and I'm happy to share some of our favorites...

One of the ways in which this topic is the most important is with regards to our meat consumption... contemporary ranching practices are one of the most agriculturally inefficient (though still "cheap") practices around, leading many folks to take up Vegetarianism primarily as an act of social justice (not taxing the world food supply or the environment inordinately). I'm not quite ready to go completely meatless, but given that decision, I've also decided to purchase meat that is grass-fed, free-range which usually means that it has a dramatically lower impact on the environment in which it is raised, and it also (conveniently) is much more nutritious! This blog post originally started as a hunt for a local meat supplier that I could buy local grass-fed meat in bulk from and freeze... stay tuned as I continue my hunt for such a supplier in BC.

Finally, there are some products which I can't buy locally, and I'm not quite willing to omit from my diet, most notably coffee. I'm resolved in those cases to purchase groceries that are most guaranteed to come from sustainable and just agricultural practices abroad. I have it on good authority (thanks Nathan) that the most important thing to consider when buying coffee is first whether it is "bird friendly" as some shade grown varieties (though better than the alternative) can still come from mono-cultural producers.

In the end, the more we adapt our own lifestyles and purchasing patterns to affirm our moral convictions, the more we change market pressures and become aware of necessary areas of advocacy. There are some businesses that aren't affected by changing demand (which is perfectly good economics) and are rather committed to *shaping* the market to suit their convenience (like producing nothing buy corn...).

I'd better stop here before I get too much more carried away... but let me know what you think - is an adapted 100-mile diet something you've tried? Do you think it's viable?



See (all sources TNIV):
Gen. 1:26-27: Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,a and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Gen. 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Gen. 2:15: The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it

On the myth that "Factories are what work best in this country", though I can't vouch for the author, they seem to have collected a compelling set of sources.