Over the past few years the localvore movement has sprung up in response to peoples growing demand for truly fresh food. A localvore is someone who seeks out food that is produced or grown locally.
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Community Garden[/caption]A localvore is a person dedicated to eating food grown and produced locally. There are a lot of good reasons to eat locally grown and produced food. Besides being flesh why do people want to purchase and consume locally grown food? Here are two good reasons:
1- The production of locally grown food requires fewer resources (primarily fossil fuels). In addition to the resources spent in growing the food additional resources are required for packing and shipping. Packing food for a long distant journey demands a different type of packaging than needed for a short hop to a farmers market, for example.
2-Buying locally produced food builds the local economy, because money spent at locally own shops tends to stay within he community longer (it circulates locally more often) than money spent in chain stores whose owners are far removed from the community.
Society can begin the transition from a consumer capitalist model were the majority of people are consumers to cooperative capitalist model were the majority of people are consumers and producers, by starting with the development of local food enterprises and supportive municipal bylaws.
The most effective way to bring that change about is to do two things:
1- Buy from locally owned businesses whenever possible, start by becoming a localvore to the best of your ability.
2- Begin to grow some of your own food. There are many ways people can grow at least of a portion of what they eat. Community gardens are one, yard sharing is another.
Hyperlocalvore describes yard sharing as:
“Yard sharing is an arrangement between people to share skills and gardening resources; space, time, strength, tools or skills, in order to grow food as locally as possible, to make neighborhoods resilient, kids healthy and food much cheaper! The group can be friends, family, neighbors, members of a faith community (or any combination!) It's also been called garden sharing or land sharing,”
The economy across North America is spinning downward, if you have not already done so; begin the transition from a dependent to an interdependent community by growing some of your own food and buying the rest from a local grower or producer.
