What is Local Food

In the past decade the eye of the health food world however has become exceedingly skeptical of almost anything we eat. Still is has long been know (at least since the mid 1930’s when Popeye began devouring spinach to keep his strength up in comics) that produce has the vital elements we need for good nutrition. When the health food craze first began, it immediately took to the notion that organic produce was healthier because it has uncontaminated by artificial pesticides and chemicals. Now however there is a new push within the food community that contends that locally grown food is the way to go.

The first question relevant to the issue is what exactly constitutes a local food. There have been definitions provided by various sources, which might help pin down what is meant by local but still the issue is clearly up for debate. For example, the U.S. Congress stated in the 2008 Farm Act that a food could be considered locally produced if it meets one or both of the following conditions:

· (I) The locality or region in which the final product is marketed, so that the total distance that the product is transported is less than 400 miles from the origin of the product; or

· (II) The State in which the product is produced.

This seems like an authoritative definition for what is local; still it might not actually capture what is meant by a local food. It has also been defined here as “food that is grown in a local area, supporting a local economy." By this definition, there is no way that a food grown at the bottom of Texas and shipped to the northern most point would be considered local, and maybe it shouldn’t be. Another article on the matter by Sarah DeWeerdt found here suggests that local food is food grown within a 100-mile range of its consumers.

She cites Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon who claim in their book “The 100-Mile Diet” “that “a 100-mile radius is large enough to reach beyond a big city and small enough to feel truly local.”

Truthfully there is no consensus about what it means to be local. However, it can be said that the movement towards local food is one that is concerned with a few things: food quality, transportation distance, local economies and sustainability. With these things in mind it might be said that local food is food that travels the least and best promotes local economy while remaining environmentally and sustainably conscious. This is still only a functional definition, as it can’t be used to determine the “locality” of a given food. But on the other hand it might be moving towards thinking about local food on a case-by-case basis which would mean that calculating the locality of a food would be much more than finding out how far away from it’s consumers it is being grown.

Of course it would then become a debate about what factors should be considered other than proximity. Obviously proximity would be near the top of the list showing that the definitions given by Congress and "The 100-Mile Diet" are good places to start.

For more on local food, check out this video with Ken Meter.