With all this talk about eating local and counting miles I thought it would be good to explain what it really means. The foundation for local eating starts with a foodshed.
Foodshed: a region or area from which a population draws its food.
The typical limit on these regions is 100 miles. Draw a 100-mile circle around where you live and that is your foodshed.
In economic terms this is ideal distance a farmer, or her goods, can travel to reach a market. That way it arrives on your plate as fresh, ripe, and nutritious as it can be.
Go outside of this limit and there is an increasing reliance on fossil fuels and a decreasing quality of the food.
For those concerned about pollution, global warming, or oil-addiction these “food miles” are a cause for concern. Farmers face similar concerns, albeit from the other side, with a rising cost of gas and oil-based fertilizers that narrow their profits.
Still for others the “go local” movement represents a desire to get the very best food they can find, and that is the fundamental reason for foodsheds.
I’ve tried to document what happens to our health with the advent of low quality food, our acceptance of it, and the difference in nutritional content.
These rings of farmland surrounding our communities represent the ideal of sustainable living. Where the countryside is not poverty-stricken, but instead a vibrant economic sector known as much for its wineries and ‘farm-days’ as it is for fresh meat, vegetables, fruits, and nuts.
Even more these areas are often recession proof as evidenced by their continual rapid growth during the past half-decade.
It is for all these reasons that the locavore movement is popular and gaining momentum, there is something in it for everyone. Even the beefiest of meat eaters.
For further reference I’ve pulled together several maps of America’s foodsheds. Take a look.
Click for a larger image.
Click for a larger image.
Madison, WI
Tucson, AZ
Chicago, IL, in the center and in the inset.
Philadelphia, PA
The Appalachian region (and mountains). Proudly proclaiming to be the best of them all!
References
San Francisco Foodshed Report, American Farmland Trust
Regional Foodshed Initiative, Columbia University
Feeding the City, University of Chicago
Greater Philadelphia Food System Study (pdf)
Place-based foods of Appalachia (pdf)
think the solution to a happiness-based model is really just “based on people working less and owning less.” You need to think deeply about what “work” is. Are we defining it as soul-sucking time spent acquiring money in order to pay debts built from acquiring stuff? Does it include a sense of satisfaction at seeing something created, sustained or used. How is work tied to the stuff we acquire and what additional costs are part of working (e.g. commuting). I would look to the Maker movement and the challenge and satisfaction of creating our own things. But I would stipulate that “working less” may be something very different depending on what work we do.
thanks kelcy. DIY and the Maker movement is definitely on our radar. we specifically asked Dale Dougherty to be a part of the event we’re producing in Vancouver b/c of this: http://www.expertclick.com/NewsReleaseWire/Futurist_Inventors_Welcome_Dale_Dougherty_to_Vancouver,201136588.aspx
As I read this, I had multiple thoughts:
- Is your premise true that consumer-driven growth model broken? Your anectdotal evidence of contemporary capitalism, which is causing a global crisis of unconscionable proportions – with food and energy prices soaring, world populations surging, and weather-related disasters like tornadoes, tsunamis, droughts, fires and floods increasing in frequency and scale…I’m not sure you can prove cause & effect???
- In order to answer the question, I think you would want to find the actual causes or variables that make up consumer-driven growth: generational, cultural, periods of war, and so on.
- Digging deeper into the second bullet, I believe would give you a better chance in studying the question & coming up with some plausible solutions.
@Urchin - I totally agree. I was at the dinner with them and I felt like the blame was being placed in the wrong area.
I would argue that we are not a consumer driven society in the first place. That’s like saying my garden is a vegetable based operation. It totally ignores all the extreme effort it takes to create the vegetable. The soil, the tilling, the weeding, the watering, the harvesting, and then finally the eating.
I think we have let economists define us using an easy measure of production. I can measure my garden by saying how many vegetables it produces but it only covers about 10% of the process.
This is especially problematic considering that all the change, innovation, and failure is occurring in the process before consumption. Look at cars for example. We are still buying cars, a lot of them, but the car industry still collapsed. They needed to change their process and the like.
In food, the same is true, we have an ever increasing demand for food but are ignoring the process behind it. Prices are rising for reasons totally unrelated to consumption.
On the whole I would recommend a definition of life-cycle consumption. Determining an economic measurement that quantifies multiple levels in the creation and consumption process. Each one is interrelated and can be tracked for growth, weakness, etc.
I just came across an interesting article that discusses aspects of what you are trying to define. I haven’t read the books they reference near the end, but they may also give some additional insights that have value to this quest. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/stefan-stern-behind-corporate-walls-the-masters-of-the-universe-weep-2297910.html