Food Miles: How Local Effects Global

One might think that get­ting your food from a local gro­cery store is not much dif­fer­ent than buy­ing from a local farmer. Think again. Eating local food can mean more than we think when it comes to effect­ing the envi­ron­ment and global warm­ing. It comes down to food miles. How much fuel had to be burned to get those New Zealand lamb chops to you?

In 2005 Jessica Prentice coined the term Locavore: some­one who exclu­sively (or at least pri­mar­ily) eats foods from their local or regional food­shed or a deter­mined radius from their home (com­monly either 100 or 250 miles, depend­ing on location).

By eat­ing locally, most loca­vores hope to cre­ate a greater con­nec­tion between them­selves and their food sources, resist indus­tri­al­ized and processed foods, and sup­port their local econ­omy. The major­ity of loca­vores do not give them­selves a strict radius from which to eat, but instead buy as much of their food as they can from farm­ers, grow­ers, and sell­ers with whom they have a rela­tion­ship or whose grow­ing or pro­duc­ing prac­tices appeal they want to support.