Some Local, Some Loco

Today's potluck dish began with basil picked from our garden, and some decidedly non-local olive oil. After some blending and the addition of some local tomatoes, and non-local wheat noodles, we had a very nice pasta.

Wheat is something we'll have to research. We're not sure where the lowest fossil-fuel pasta can be found, but we'll write when we figure it out. Pasta is one of our favorite foods, so we'll try to see how locally we can source it.

Which brings up an article that a friend pointed us to arguing at great length how "eating locally isn't always the greenest option." The whole article comes across as quibbling over the details. He makes a good point that you have to take into account not only the carbon emissions embodied in transporting the food, but also the emissions in growing, packaging, storing, etc. So, there may be 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 examples where growing something far away may involve less fossil fuels than growing it locally, there doesn't seem much point in spending a lot of energy debating those exceptions. If you want a simple means for making the low-emission decision the vast majority of the time, choosing the local one is a good guideline.

Choosing organic, even if not local, is another good guideline, as you avoid all the additional chemical fertilizers involved.

Another of his quibbles is that Barbara Kingsolver achieved her year of eating locally by moving from food-desert Tuscon to the water and soil-rich Appalachians. While true that this isn't possible for many people, it is a pointless argument against eating local. People who live in Tuscon should 1) try to eat local and reduce their footprint, and 2) feel a bit guilty (or perhaps nervous!) about living in a place that cannot sustain them, and think about moving to a part of the country that can sustain them. Most won't do so, but if a few do, that reduces the strain on that fragile desert environment. Or if the example of leaving Tuscon causes other potential sun-seeking retirees to think about what might happen to their food security if gasoline prices skyrocketed, then that is a good thing. "Hmmm. Maybe a few winters aren't a bad thing if we can eat fresher food and do the right thing for our grandchildren."

McWilliams's protestations that on the whole he supports eating local would be believable if he hadn't titled his article "Eating Local Isn't Always the Best Option." Why not, "Eating Local is Almost Always the Best Option." He chooses to emphasize the negative, to create doubt and a name for himself.

In the end, the article seems to just be a way to create controversy out of a minor observation. It's like criticizing someone who sells his car and takes up biking to work because once in a while when it is raining hard, he takes a taxi, which gets worse gas mileage than the car he used to own. Overall, he is doing the right thing, even if a nitpicker can find a few freak exceptions to his very good rule.

Austin Salad

This salad is what we're eating local today. It has peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce from the Austin Farmer's Market. Normally, lettuce and tomatoes are not something you can eat on a locally-grown salad in Texas. Greens grow well here in the winter and spring, and tomatoes are a summer food. But one farmer had lettuce, and when we asked him how he does it, he said "It's my wife's secret!" However she does it, we were glad to have local summer lettuce.
The blue plate has delicious locally-made "wheat roast" with smoke-dried tomatoes. The wheat roast (aka wheat gluten, or in Indonesia, seytan) is the protein portion of wheat baked into a bread-like loaf with the consistency of meat. The smoke-dried tomatoes are a speciality of Boggy Creek Farm, and are a way of enhancing and preserving the flavor of summer tomatoes year-round. All together, it is high in protein, and with the smoky flavor of the smoke-drieds, it is a delicious part of the meal.

Inspiration

Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, describes her family's efforts to eat practically all their food from local sources. The reasons for this are many, but include lowering their carbon emissions, supporting their local economy, and getting to know their community.
That carbon footprint issue is a big one. How can it make sense to move grapes in refrigerated planes and trucks thousands of miles around the world? Or to truck every piece of a salad from California to Maine in refrigeration? Only the temporary availability of cheap petroleum can make this possible. But by now everyone knows that this is contributing to global climate change. Even those who insist on burying their heads in the sand about climate change must accept that in 5-50 years, cheap petroleum must come to an end due to supply and demand.
There is growing awareness of the Peak Oil phenomenon, which implies that oil prices will skyrocket much sooner than the reserves are depleted. Some argue that this is already happening, and $5-10 / gallon gasoline in the USA is just around the corner.
But bigger than the cost issue is the increasing warming of our atmosphere, which is already raising sea temperatures, melting glaciers, and likely contributing to weather changes. Simply put, we can't afford to burn all the oil we've discovered, let alone any more we might discover.
So, inspired by this, our own goal is a simple one: to reduce the amount of gasoline required to produce and transport our food. We took the biggest carbon reduction step years ago, before climate change was even an issue. This was to go vegetarian for environmental reasons. But, whether you're a vegetarian or an omnivore, everyone can take the step of eating local. It keeps money in your own neighborhood, region or town. This means more of your food-raising neighbors have money to spend locally, money to pay school taxes, and improve your community.
We're not ready to go crazy over this and eat 100% locally, nor are we particulary good farmers (my tomato-growing efforts are very sad). But we do know dozens of people who grow or prepare food, and our goal is to buy from them. Our starting goal is 80% locally grown foods. If we reach that goal, we'll shoot for 90%.