Antonius Block, you have some good points. I think there is a “let them eat cake” kind of attitude that comes out of movements like this and I may be guilty of it myself. However, I at least try to understand that this is not going to work for everyone, only those of a certain geographical location and with a certain amount of disposable income.
This may just throw fuel on the fire, but hell, why not–I should mention that I’m also a vegetarian. I was a die-hard carnivore for most of my life, up until a year or two ago, when I came to this line of thinking: No, I don’t think it’s totally wrong to kill other animals and eat them, and I don’t think our bodies weren’t built to process meat (as some vegetarians claim). I think we were built to be omnivores, and it’s part of the natural order for us to eat meat. However, since *I am privileged *and I do have the choice of eating a vegetarian diet, it would be better for me to do so, for a number of reasons. Although I don’t feel that it’s morally absolutely wrong to kill animals to eat them, I feel like given the choice between shooting a pig in the head so I can have some bacon and eating some tofu bacon instead, I’d probably rather eat the tofu bacon than kill the animal. If I were starving, or if I couldn’t afford to buy Boca Burgers or whatever, then sure, I would have absolutely no problem with eating the bacon. (Also, factory farms are really screwed up from both the animal welfare and environmental points of view, and I’d like to try not to support them–and my cholesterol level might go through the roof if I were eating lots of meat again.) For all these reasons, and because I am *privileged *and I have the choice, I choose not to eat meat. I understand that everyone’s situation is different. You may have anemia, or may not have access to enough non-meat foods to make a balanced diet, or you may not be able to afford the meat alternatives you would want or need, or you may just really, really love bacon and really, really hate tofu. So I try not to force this choice on others, but I have made the choice myself because I am in a position to do so.
I feel the same way about eating locally. I am trying not to make this a “let them eat cake” situation. I don’t expect a single mother of three to spend her whole paycheck buying organic, locally grown kale and slow-cooking it every evening after coming home from her second job. But I have the privilege of being able to make the choice to do this, so I want to do it! I make enough money to shop at the yuppie farmer’s market. I have enough time to cook all the time. I live in an area that has a farmer’s market year-round, and a wonderful bounty of local foods. I am incredibly lucky to be in a position to make the choice to eat locally this month, and to have the spare $14.95 a year and free time to spend writing about my choice on some Internet message board.
treis–maybe you’re right about the particular example you cite. But which do you think pollutes more, 20 trucks bringing produce from 60 miles away, or 20 airplanes bringing produce from 2000 miles away? Now which do you think is the more typical scenario, in general? From looking at the stickers on my local grocery store shelf, I’d say it’s the latter. Also, at the risk of sounding like a let-them-eat-caker, if everyone ate locally then the guy who lives 2000 miles away wouldn’t be penalized by my choosing local products, since the guy who lives 10 miles away from him might be choosing his local products instead. This makes more sense in California than anywhere else, I guess–I have a big can of imported Greek olive oil in my cabinet when there are Californian olive oil producers just miles away from me, and maybe Greek people are paying big bucks to have Californian olive oil imported. Same with, say, Napa wines versus New Zealand wines. I’m not such a wine conoisseur that I would miss the NZ wine if someone swapped in a bottle of Napa red. Yet if I’m not consciously thinking about it, I’ll happily buy a bottle of NZ wine while someone from New Zealand is probably doing the same with a bottle of Napa wine.
Also, re: Amber Waves of Californian Grain. I am not actually buying any bread this month from local bakeries because I am aware that the wheat is not grown locally. Full Belly Farms apparently grows and mills a small amount of their own wheat, but this month we’re probably going to rely on potatoes, sweet potatoes, and possibly rice for our starches.
I don’t know what, if anything, I can do about getting water from Hetch Hetchy.
Spectre of Pithecanthropus, here is a good place to start. And here’s an article someone wrote about trying to eat locally in LA. Good luck, let me know how it goes!
**Shalmanese, **sure, the 2 lbs of fertilizer thing is possible. Want to find a cite for it actually being the case? Until I have evidence otherwise, I’ll assume that it makes more sense environmentally to eat locally grown foods, and that the organic farmer in Sonoma is not actually flying planeloads of compost in from Chile.
Jamaika a jamaikaiaké, my guess is that it may cost $5 an hour to pay people in California to pick lettuce, but 5 cents an hour to pay people in Peru to pick lettuce, which may make up for the increased fuel costs of flying the produce from Peru to California.
For all those who are interested in the actual food aspect of my experiment, for dinner yesterday, we had roasted red potatoes, steamed broccoli and carrots, stir-fried pea sprouts with garlic, and scrambled eggs with onions. Today I had roasted Yukon Gold potatoes for breakfast, and for lunch, a salad of with romaine lettuce, Pink Lady apples, hard-boiled egg, and lemon-shallot-oregano-olive oil dressing. Of these three meals, only the oil and salt were not local. So far, so good, says the lucky Californian.
