Attention EC Locavores - Organic Gardening Class is Coming 18 May

Eating locally and the 100-mile diet are becoming familiar and vogue concepts in recent times. rising food prices and the burgeoning food shortages worldwide, mostly due to ill-advised political decision to support plant based fuel production and Weather induced crops loss (possibly attributed to global warming trends) leave many of us one trucker strike (probably from the fast rising cost of fuel) away from helplessness and hunger.

A locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius such as 50, 100, or 150 miles (your own backyard). "Locavore" was coined by Jessica Prentice from San Francisco Bay Area on the occasion of World Environment Day 2005. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food, with the argument that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Local grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since supermarkets that import their food use more fossil fuels and non-renewable resources.

The New Oxford American Dictionary chose locavore as its word of the year 2007. Some locavores draw inspiration from the 100-Mile Diet or from advocates of local eating like Barbara Kingsolver whose book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" chronicles her family's attempts to eat locally. Barbara is quoted, "...if every American citizen would eat just one local and organically-grown meal a week, the savings in fuel [alone] would amount to 1.1 million barrels of oil every week."

You are what you eat... but, what is at the end of your spork and how it got there is most important.

What's a family to do? I'll tell you what... take Earth Connection's organic gardening and wild edibles classes to find a partial solution to what might seem as a bleak future.

Besides the benefits to your dinner table there are added benefits to local sustainable growth including the encouragement and support of small local farmers. Learning wild edibles provides food for just the energy expended in finding and preparing, while planting your own small organic garden increases the size of your brain...

Yes, you have to learn a whole new skill, but it is good for you just like food from your organic garden or your backyard.



Ref: Local food. (2008, May 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:28, May 6, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Local_food&oldid=210122660