local

Author

SARA GROCHOWSKI

Do It Green! Minnesota

How important is it to you that a business is locally and independently owned, or that it engages in green practices? How important is it to you that you work for an environmentally friendly company? Or that your office space or production facility is sustainable and healthy? The answer may change depending on where you live and work. What cannot change is the interconnectedness and interdependence of society, our environment, and the economy.

Author

JESSIE HOULIHAN

Do It Green! Minnesota

Butter Bakery and Café owner, Dan Swenson-Klatt, on how his restaurant is working to lessen their impact on the environment.

Q: How does Butter Bakery's product differ from a conventional restaurant?

Author

SARA GROCHOWSKI

Do It Green! Minnesota

Since the 1970s, the increase of multi-national food companies has increased the size of not only farms but the overall food system. During this same time period, a slow and steady movement of small farms began selling a variety of products to local communities, building relationships, and changing purchasing habits. With these changes in our food systems, people's eating habits and grocery choices have also changed. A number of terms can now be used for describing our diets today-from locavore, to a low-carbon diet, to slow food, or local.

Author

ELI EFFINGER-WEINTRAUB

Do It Green! Minnesota

Nothing tastes better on a hot summer day than a crisp, cool salad. Before you toss up that salad, consider where the lettuce and other fruits and vegetables on your summer plates come from. If it's like most conventional produce in this country, it comes from an average of 1,500 miles away. 39% of our fruits and 12% of our vegetables traveled from another country.¹ Is the lettuce in that salad good for the environment? We compare three heads of lettuce: one grown conventionally in California (where more than half of

Footnotes/Endnotes

References:

http://looncommons.org/2008/01/11
/racking-up-the-food-miles/

http://www.lifeintheusa.com/food
/vegetables.htm

http://attra.ncat.org/downloads
/water_quality/irrigation.pdf

http://www.sare.org/publications/energy
/energy.pdf

http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff
/ppp/food_mil.pdf

Author

Jennifer Maiser

Eat Local Challenge Participant

1. Eating local means more for the local economy.
2. Locally grown produce is fresher.
3. Local food just plain tastes better.
4. Locally grown fruits and vegetables have longer to ripen.
5. Eating local is better for air quality and pollution.
6. Buying local food keeps us in touch with the seasons.
7. Buying locally grown food is fodder for a wonderful story.
8. Food with less distance to travel from farm to plate has less susceptibility to harmful contamination.

Author

Andrea Yoder

Harmony Valley Farm

Footnotes/Endnotes

Organic Consumers Association online Local Buying Guide
www.organicconsumers.org/btc/buyingguide.cfm

Land Stewardship Project CSA Directory, www.landstewardshipproject.org/csa.html

Farmer John's Cookbook: the Real Dirt on Vegetables, John Peterson, Gibbs Smith Publishers, 2006.

From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm Fresh Seasonal Produce, Madison Area CSA Coalition, Jones Books, 2004.

Harmony Valley Farm
Viroqua, WI, 608-483-2143
www.harmonyvalleyfarm.com

Buy at your local farmer's market, farm or join a CSA!

Author

Anna Wasescha

Farm In The City

Includes Listing of Local Community Gardens 

There is little agreement about the definition of a community garden, probably because the most important goal of such places is to create a healthy community rather than a healthy crop of flowers, vegetables or fruit trees. Betsy Johnson of Garden Futures in Boston defines them this way: Community Gardens are community spaces that are communally cultivated and cared for; these spaces may consist of individually-worked plots, multiple person caretaker areas, sitting areas, and small-scale children play areas.

Footnotes/Endnotes

American Community Gardening Association

City Farmer's Urban Agriculture Notes

Cultivating Community, Deborah Fryman and Karen Payne, 2001

Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities, Joe Nasr, Annu Ratta and Jac Smit, 1996

GardenWorks
Minneapolis, MN 612-612-278-7123
Email
Website

Minnesota Green Program of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society
1755 Prior Avenue North
Falcon Heights, MN 651-643-3601
Website