Eating Local Enhances Sustainability

Here are a couple of excellent thoughts on the many, many benefits of eating local from Paul Hawken’s recent book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming.

Eating local foods “…creates food webs that produce fresher, higher quality food, and provides food security, because it lessens dependence on distant sources. It reduces shipping, energy, and packaging and engenders farmer’s markets, festivals, and engagement. Localization strengthens the economy, as money circulates when spent on locally produced items. It also functions as a response to climate change. A growing post-carbon movement is trying to organize communities to reduce their energy use and, as with food, reduce their dependence on imported energy.”

“The term solving for pattern was coined by Wendell Berry, and refers to a solution that addresses multiple problems instead of just one. Solving for pattern arises naturally when one perceives problems as symptoms of a systemic failure, rather than as random errors requiring anodynes.

For example, sustainable agriculture addresses a number of issues simultaneously: It reduces agricultural runoff, which is the main cause of … dead zones in lakes, estuaries, and oceans; it reduces use of energy-intensive nitrogen-based fertilizers; it ameliorates climate change, because organic soil sequesters carbon, whereas industrial farming releases carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and is the second-greatest cause of climate change after fossil fuel combustion; it improves worker health because of the absence of toxic pesticides; it enables soil to retain more moisture and is thus less reliant on irrigation and outside sources of water; it is more productive than conventional agriculture; it is less susceptible to erosion; and it provides habitat for pollinators, birds, and beneficial insects, which promotes biodiversity. On top of all that, the resulting food commands a premium in the market, making small farms economically more viable.”