Dana O'Driscoll The politics of food have been tenacious and challenging for as long as I can remember. I have friends/family who are vegan, vegetarian, and/or raw. In general, I find that many people who work with an ethics-based diet makes it a point to establish the superiority of their diet over all others. There is a tendency to oversimplify the discussion about the ethics of eating–somehow eating X or Y diet makes you an ethical, better person. Unfortunately, many of the vegan/vegetarian vs. meat eating debates is that its an either-or fallacy (logical fallacy in a rhetorical sense). Either you eat vegan/vegetarian and you’re an ethical person or you eat meat and you are a selfish bigot. One problem with this approach is that these “ethical” diets are often based on exotic ingredients and don’t necessarily align with seasonal, local eating patterns. But choosing to forgo animal products doesn’t necessarily mean that what you are are eating is any more ethical. For example, I have a family member who is a raw vegan. Nearly all of the foods that he eats are shipped from exotic locations using fossil fuels (where else are you going to get mangoes, avocados, and dates in January in Michigan?) I believe that the overall environmental impact of your diet should be just as important as the ethics of animal welfare. Reality gives us more than just these two choices.
Animal welfare is certainly an issue that we need to care about both with meat and dairy products, undoubtedly. But only placing concern upon animal welfare is ignoring a huge amount of other critical issues with our food system. We have issues with fossil fuel use, land use, poisoning of workers, and the monopolization of seed crops and loss of genetic diversity. In fact, the whole food system is rife with horrors and ethical violations. Do you really want to eat another tomato purchased at the store after reading this story? Can you really enjoy your Earth Balance vegan spread when a main ingredient is palm oil, which directly destroys rainforests? How about the local impact on land use and food ethics of that excellent quinoa and soy that you enjoy so much? Even the so-called “good guys” are often not so great (as in the recent case of the GMO law defeat in California or Trader Joe’s many violations).
And so, I’d like to offer an alternative for those who are concerned with the ethics of eating: localvorism. A localvore is someone who focuses on local, sustainable eating and who supports local growers and/or grows his/her own food. The localvore diet is a seasonal diet that changes as availability of food changes with the goal being minimizing the distance from food-to-plate, in growing or raising as much of your own food as possible, and in eating animal products in very limited quantities and only in ways that their ethics can be established. This may take on different forms depending on your location; but here in Michigan, I work for the “100 mile” diet, where I get as much food as I possibly can from 100 miles or less (and in fact, most of my food comes from less than 30 miles!) I also make sure I am eating non-GMO, organic produce–food that is as close to its natural, unaltered state as possible.
As a localvore, I eat vegan or vegetarian most of the time when I’m out and about, especially if I can’t verify where the food I’m eating comes from and what ethical/sustainable/animal-friendly practices may have been employed. Yet, I support locally, ethically raised meat and dairy and eat it several times a month at home (I belong to a CSA and a raw milk share that provides dairy). In this way, I recognize both the ethical implications of factory farming and choose not to support them but also recognize that animals can be treated humanely and support the local farmers engaging in these practices. I also keep pet chickens. I eat their eggs, but they are pets and so they’ll live long healthy lives even if they stop laying.
I also see localvorism as part of my spiritual practice in the sense that this diet brings me closer to the seasons, aligning with the energies of this land and the foods that grow here. I enjoy fresh foods when they are in season, experiment with season extension for fresh greens, and enjoy dried/canned/stored foods when they are not. I really feel this diet helps me establish a deeper spiritual awareness of the turning wheel of the year because I begin paying attention to what is growing when. Eating in season is a spiritual thing, bringing you so much closer to the turning wheel of the year.
Right now, on average, my diet is about 60-70% local year-round (and if I could only start growing my own rice, which I have planned for next year, I would get much higher!) This number came over a period of years and a lot of proactive approaches to understanding food. I described the process of shifting to a locally-based diet in my earlier post, “Six Principles for Local Eating.”
Well done, this is something I am working towards in my own life.
Thank you very much for this thoughtful post. Part of the reason I became a vegetarian approximately 25 years ago was being appalled at the effects that thoughtless, profit-oriented cattle ranching had wrought on the North American continent. I am primarily vegan, but at least one of my food choices has got to go: the Earth Balance. Better I should use butter or nut butter or nothing at all. Shudder.
Thanks for posting! I didn’t read the Earth Balance label till after I brought it home….that was a mistake.
I’m so glad you posted this! Eating more locally is an Earth Path project that I’m pursuing. My town here in Nebraska got its first CSA this past summer, and that’s helped tremendously. I was able to preserve a little excess produce from each of those weekly boxes, along with a bit extra from our 200 sq. ft. community garden plot. My husband and I keep a few pots of live kitchen herbs and dwarf citrus trees indoors, as well.
So during this past week, we were able to enjoy these foods from within a three-mile radius of our home: cowpeas, lima beans, beets, peppers, sweet potatoes, raspberries, Meyer lemon, honey, bay leaf, chives, dill, and mint. From beyond three miles but closer than 100: apple, black walnuts, goat milk, goat cheese, and eggs. Later this week, I will probably put some frozen local tomatoes, pumpkin, and mixed greens to good use, as well.
I wish I could say this constitutes 60-70 percent of our diet. I’d estimate that during the summer, we were able to eat 70-80 percent local by volume, but not by calories. At this time of year, that figure has dropped considerably. We’ll keep working on it!
Nebraska sounds like its heading in the right direction! Thanks for posting!
I’m so glad you posted this! Eating more locally is an Earth Path project that I’m pursuing. My town here in Nebraska got its first CSA this past summer, and that’s helped tremendously. I was able to preserve a little excess produce from each of those weekly boxes, along with a bit extra from our 200 sq. ft. community garden plot. My husband and I keep a few pots of live kitchen herbs and dwarf citrus trees indoors, as well.
So during this past week, we were able to enjoy these foods from within a three-mile radius of our home: cowpeas, lima beans, beets, peppers, sweet potatoes, raspberries, Meyer lemon, honey, bay leaf, chives, dill, and mint. From beyond three miles but closer than 100: apple, black walnuts, goat milk, goat cheese, and eggs. Later this week, I will probably put some frozen local tomatoes, pumpkin, and mixed greens to good use, as well.
I wish I could say this constitutes 60-70 percent of our diet. I’d estimate that during the summer, we were able to eat 70-80 percent local by volume, but not by calories. At this time of year, that figure has dropped considerably. We’ll keep working on it!
I’m so glad you posted this! Eating more locally is an Earth Path project that I’m pursuing. My town here in Nebraska got its first CSA this past summer, and that’s helped tremendously. I was able to preserve a little excess produce from each of those weekly boxes, along with a bit extra from our 200 sq. ft. community garden plot. My husband and I keep a few pots of live kitchen herbs and dwarf citrus trees indoors, as well.
So during this past week, we were able to enjoy these foods from within a three-mile radius of our home: cowpeas, lima beans, beets, peppers, sweet potatoes, raspberries, Meyer lemon, honey, bay leaf, chives, dill, and mint. From beyond three miles but closer than 100: apple, black walnuts, goat milk, goat cheese, and eggs. Later this week, I will probably put some frozen local tomatoes, pumpkin, and mixed greens to good use, as well.
I wish I could say this constitutes 60-70 percent of our diet. I’d estimate that during the summer, we were able to eat 70-80 percent local by volume, but not by calories. At this time of year, that figure has dropped considerably. We’ll keep working on it!
There are many good things about eating from local sources, but transportation does not appear to be one of them. Transportation turns out to be only a small part of the energy cost of most food, and sometimes importing food from distant lands is more environmentally friendly than buying locally.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/opinions-energy-locavores-on-my-mind.html
Yeah, I recently read this. I think it also depends on the kind of transportation system you employ–there are also good examples of local transportation systems that don’t rely on fossil fuels, like this one: http://www.qsrmagazine.com/consumer-trends/food-bikes-could-be-hottest-new-trend
We actually have some of that happening in Downtown Ann Arbor and Downtown Detroit, with food grown and transported to the local farmer’s market all by pedal power :).
I am interested in growing rice, as well. Do you have a source for seed? I’m in Ann Arbor – perhaps we could buy a larger packet together and split it?
Yeah. I know of two places that offer seed from the Hokkaido Region of Japan (which is what we need to grow here) You can buy Duborskian seed from Fedco Seeds in Waterville, ME (http://www.fedcoseeds.com/). I’m also told that Seed Saver’s Exchange carries it in their catalog, but I just received the most recent one and I don’t see it. So I’m going to get some from Fedco :).
Hello from a fellow OBODie… I read your post with interest; very well put!
My concern is that animals are being discussed solely as food, which to me they are not; they are beings who (it can reasonably be argued) count as moral subjects, with lives that matter to them, independently of human ends. Where it is possible to choose not to kill such beings – human and nonhuman creatures alike – one should not: that to me is an ethical imperative, not a dietary principle… I appreciate that many don’t agree that animals are moral subjects, and this is quite another topic! I simply want to point out that for some of us, diet is not the motivating factor in our veganism/vegetarianism, and your argument need not mention meat at all to be persuasive of the planetary benefits of becoming a local-vore.
Hi Deb, thanks for your comment! In this post I may discuss animals as a food source (as in relationship to food) but in other posts, I talk about animals as fellow members of the tribe (such as this one: https://druidgarden.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/living-with-rather-than-against-nature/). I think that different people view the issue of animal ethics in different ways. I personally operate from an animistic point of view, and see my relationship with animals and all life as part of the greater tribe (working on a post on this, actually). So yes, I agree, but not everyone does, and this blog tries to reach a diverse readership (many of whom will never give up eating meat, so if they are going to eat it, at least do so in an ethical manner).
[…] farmer’s markets and other alternatives, I think that people broadly are starting to “buy local” and recognize the importance of keeping their money in the local community. And with these […]
Thanks for the heads up on Earth Balance!