How much does eating locally-produced food help the climate problem? What are the other potential environmental and social benefits of eating locally-grown/produced food? Do you have a food garden in your school or at home? If not, do you want one?
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Is locally-produced food really "sustainable"?
I think that there are benefits to eating food locally, such as a decrease in the amount of pollution being emitted into the environment and promoting our community (like others have previously stated in this discussion). However, according to an article I read from the GRACE Communications Foundation, called "Local & Regional Food Systems," the term local "doesn't provide any indication of food qualities such as freshness, nutritional value, or production practices, and can't be used as a reliable indicator of sustainability." So we, as consumers, should do a little more research on the people/institutions we get our food from and have to be careful because we can be easily misled. Just because the package of meat or produce claims to be locally produced doesn't mean that the people who grew or planted them made them in an environmentally friendly way.
Also, sadly my family does not have a garden in our backyard. I definitely would like to have one, but anything that we try to plant in the soil refuses to cooperate and grow (it usually ends up withering or never sprout ing). But at Bishop O'Dowd High School, just as Fernando and Julia have written, we do have a wonderful garden inside of our "Living Lab." It's much more successful in terms of harvest than my backyard at home.
Hi Georgia, I totally agree with you; informers as well as consumers should do a better job in naming specifics on what "Local" foods really have to offer in that aspects. However I believe that when they say that eating locally produced food is being more sustainable, I think they are referring to not the food itself, but the process in order to make and distribute that food. According to Rich Pirog of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the average fresh food item on our dinner table travels 1,500 miles to get there. However, buying local food takes away that need for all that transportation. In other words, buying local foods eliminates the carbon emissions needed to transport those "nonlocal" foods resulting in being more sustainable. That being said, from personal experience, just because we decide to eat local foods doesn't necessarily mean that they will stop transporting these goods. I think the problem is at the source rather than what each of us individually does.