Center of the Drum

Last November, I traveled north, from San Francisco to Portland, with my buddy Larry. We were on a fact-finding mission for a new 2 year program, the University of the Wild. We visited program centers, research facilities, colleges and intentional communities. After events and visits with groups throughout the Bay Area, up into Mendocino and Humbolt counties, we reached the northern-most stretch of the California coastline.

That evening, in Arcata, California, about 200 people gathered for a celebration of local food and music. The instructions went out with the word-of-mouth invitation; come to a Bioregional Potluck! Every ingredient of every dish had to be grown and produced within 200 miles of the town, even the spices! All ingredients were wriiten on cards and placed in front of the dish. Other information was included, including the sources (farms, co-ops, gardens, etc.) from which the ingredients were procured, as well as the methods of preparation.

It was an omnivorous gathering, but that night, we were all ‘localvores!’

The goal was to highlight the amazing diversity of locally grown food and the ability to manifest self-reliance in food production and distribution. The plan in Arcata is to continue this kind of gathering, once a month, reducing the radius until all foods come from the immediate biological region, or Bioregion.

In the US, an item of food travels an average of 1500 miles from the place where it is grown to the place where it is purchased and consumed! Some of the positives of buying organic products can be negated by the distance and method with which the food is transported. Also factoring into the ‘food miles’ concept is the distance the consumer travels to increasingly centralized marketplaces. Many towns are losing their small stores in the downtown regions to the giant mega-stores, out of reach of pedestrians and bicycles.

Foods shipped long distances often require constant refrigeration and heavy packaging. Here are some links with more info on this subject:

food miles article #1

food miles article #2

University of the Wild website

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 10:12 am and is filed under Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.