Super Eco

Photo credit: sarah gilbert

I've been committed to the eat-local movement for just over a year now, and the part that has most amazed me (beyond the fact that eating local is far more delicious and expansive than I ever imagined possible) is how many people I meet are joining the cause. I'd expect the editor of a food website to be a locavore, of course, but the mom of a little boy in my three-year-old's speech therapy class was a surprise. As was the girlfriend of my husband's most habitually-unemployed friend—the guy who can often be found in our kitchen surreptitiously sharing Top Ramen with my husband.

It's not only the rather eccentric folk of Portland, Oregon who are changing their ways to seek out more locally-produced meats and cheeses and shopping in farmer's markets; it's a wide variety of people nationwide, from WalMart shoppers to suburban moms to exhausted freelancing urban mamas like me. As of August 2008, there were 4,685 farmer's markets in the U.S. according to USDA data; up 3,000 from 1994. The Portland Farmer's Market where I shop is planning to switch from a generous April-December season to year-round come 2010; and there are already two nearby farmer's markets that meet throughout the winter.

Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Alice Waters would be proud of the influence they've wrought; more people are choosing to eat local, not just because local foods tend to be more fresh and tasty, but because (according to researcher Laurie Demeritt) of "the desire to know more about where your products come."