The growth of the local food movement

During a lovely night out, it’s rare for diners to consider the origins of the food they’re about to consume. One evening a few years ago, I was invited to a Producer’s Dinner at the Four Seasons, where chef Marc Miron created a five-course meal from five different ingredients he had personally sourced from around regional NSW. At this dinner, he encouraged the producer of the meal’s main star (honey, artichoke, cheese etc) to stand up and tell us a little about their product and the way it had been cultivated.

Shy at first, most of these farmers started speaking very quickly and concisely but, as they noticed the avid interest of the audience, they eventually left the lectern to speak with all the passion of a motivational speaker. Their enthusiasm was infectious and, I believe, gave the meals an extra tasty zing! After this night, I started to think more about where my food came from, how it was produced and whose dedication resulted in such wonderful produce, which eventually led me to the Local Food movement.

As its name suggests, the Local Food movement involves buying comestibles from sources close to home. “Close” can be defined either by the size of the city and its agricultural surrounds or by eco-region, but mostly advocates of the movement tend to regard it as food that hasn’t been shipped great distances. Some benefits are that energy is saved and transportation-related pollution is minimised.

Local food is often, but not always, organic or farmed using sustainable methods, resulting in fresh, nutritious bounty that, when bought direct from the farmer, supports the local economy. In addition, eating locally encourages people to create connections within a broader community and develop the skills of growing and cooking healthy food; skills that seem to have been lost since the emergence of ready-packed frozen microwave meals.

The origins of Local Food are in the Slow Food movement, founded by Italian writer Carlo Petrini in 1989, whose ethos encourages people to buy from local marketplaces and support producers who produce local and traditional food products according to lore and traditions. As this message slowly spread around the world — the Slow Food movement boasts 80,000 members internationally — folks began to focus on their immediate environment and how to make this practicable.

In the past year, the movement got a further boost from the publication of two books that follow the fortunes of families who have changed their lifestyles to embrace the local food ideal. The first, The 100 Mile Diet by Canadians Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, began when the authors baulked at the distances most of their food had travelled before it reached their plate. In response, they chose to consume food found within 100 miles of their home.

“It’s an easy way to start thinking local,” they explain on their website (www.100milediet.org). “A 100-mile radius is large enough to reach beyond a big city and small enough to feel truly local. And it rolls off the tongue more easily than the 160 Kilometre Diet.” During that time, they came to understand a lot more about agriculture systems, family-run farms, organic produce, community gardens, the intricacies of preserving and canning food as well as the hardship of giving up coffee.

The second book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is part memoir, part journalistic investigation by Barbara Kingsolver, documenting the year she and her family spent eating only food grown in their own (admittedly large) back garden or bought from local farmers. In it they discover the almost military-style planning involved in ensuring they had food during all the seasons and the delights of taking food from soil to table. The book also investigates associated ideas such as the loss of heirloom varieties of fruit and vegetables and the losing battle faced by pesticides and herbicides.