What's the point?

A few weeks ago, Jake brought home a book by James McWilliams called Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. Just reading the title, my first reaction was to get defensive, almost offended that Jake checked it out from the library. He made a valid point though that it's good to look at both sides of an argument and that it might be interesting to see what the "other side" is saying. That's one of the things I love about the debates I always get into with Jake (don't tell him I said that) – it challenges me to really understand and justify my convictions.

I haven't actually read the book yet, but what I understand from my heated discussions with Jake is that according to the author, it actually may be better for the environment to ship large quantities of food across the globe than it is to eat food that travels fewer miles. It is more efficient to import a ton of blueberries from Argentina than it is to get them from a farm several miles away when we're looking at the ratio of fuel to blueberries. The book also states that relying on local food sources and small farms is not sustainable since they cannot support the food demands of our large population the way industrial agriculture does. The glaring message I was hearing was, "Listen, locavores. Eating locally isn't all it's cracked up to be."

I have to admit that at first, I felt a bit defeated. Turns out, not eating locally is better for your carbon footprint and all this time, I thought I was going green. At the height of my over-dramatic reaction, I said to Jake, exasperated, "So, what's the point?" And he aptly deflected the question back to me, "So, what is the point?" And this is what I told him.

I eat locally because it completely changed the way I see food. Before I became a locavore, I saw food the way most supermarkets present it – a price. I never once stopped to think of where that food came from or if it was in season. I like to know how my food was grown and how the animals were treated. Large-scale food producers may be more efficient, but they are much less transparent to the average consumer.

I eat locally because knowing where the food came from helped me get more in tune with nature. When I see a non-tropical food, one that could be grown in the Northwest, from the Southern Hemisphere, I know it's probably not in season.

I eat locally because buying produce from the farmers' market, as any good locavore would do, has given me an education. What's selling is what's in season. And what's in season in December, for example, forces you to expand your culinary horizons. After all, you just don't come across kohlrabi and Jerusalem artichokes everyday. Not only that, my farmers' market inspires a sense of community – people who value local farmers and delicious fruits and vegetables that were not engineered or grown just to be transported.

I eat locally because it supports my local economy. I love this state and I want it to thrive. If a food can be grown in the Northwest, I want to eat it from the Northwest when it's naturally intended to be eaten. Maybe we can get blueberries from Argentina in the winter, but as I discovered this summer, nothing tastes better than the beautiful fresh ones you pick right off the bush. The fact that it has inspired me to transform my yard into my own local food source goes without saying.

While being a locavore may not have reduced my carbon footprint, it has made me more aware of the choices I make everyday. I may never know what effects my new green lifestyle has on the environment, but I can say for certain that it has definitely had a positive impact on my life.