Locally produced food requires much less of a carbon footprint to make it to the table than food from other parts of the country. For example, if you choose to buy strawberries grown in Mexico. These strawberries have been driven in a truck to the packaging facility to the airport or in a trunk to the United States where they are then driven in trucks or flown in planes throughout the country to your local supermarket where they are then bought by you and most likely driven home. This process calls for lots of gas and therefore, adds to air pollution as a result. I believe we should make an effort to stop eating foods if they cannot be produced locally during that season. I try to buy local food from the farmers market as much as possible as it helps the local growers prosper and creates community. I also make an effort to grow lots of my own food at home which requires no carbon emissions to make it to my table aside from when my family and I went to the store to buy the seeds. We have a plethora of different fruits and vegetables including: tomatoes, strawberries, zucc hinis, asparagus, beans, lettuce, rhubarb, apples, kale, apricots, plums, lemons, blueberries and celery. We also have an herb garden where we grow mint, thyme, oregano, parsley, and cilantro. The food from my garden has better flavor than anything I find in the store. It is awesome to be able to just run into my backyard and pick strawberries when I need them and eat them right from the plant. Having a garden also creates community for my family because we share our surplus with friends and family. Having my own garden also educated me on what is in season and what is not so, I do not buy things that are not local or have modified.  I believe it would help climate change and make people more conscious of what they are eating if we built more community gardens or gardens in our backyards. A report from the National Gardening Association states community gardens have gone up by 200% since 2008 and 38% of Americans have home gardens producing food. The future looks promising if the United States continues to move in this direction.

I entirely agree. My family doesn't usually eat food locally grown. Because of this, food was the main impact on my carbon footprint. We are going to try to start shopping for food that is locally grown, so that we can improve our carbon footprint. I also think your idea of building community gardens is a great one. It is a great way for us to reduce our carbon footprints. Green Light New Orleans website states that the average American uses "50,000 gallons of gasoline per year [from] eating food that is not locally sourced, which creates an output of 16,600 lbs of CO2 per person, per year." If we all had our own gardens we could reduce carbon emissions by a lot.

Source:
"Green Light New Orleans - Backyard Vegetable Garden Program - Carbon Reduction." Green Light New Orleans - Backyard Vegetable Garden Program - Carbon Reduction. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2016. <http://www.greenlightneworleans.org/bac … reduction>