Do you know who grows your food? If you’re an average Mainer. just 20% of the calories you eat are produced in Maine.
The average Maine meal travels 1,800 miles from farm to table, estimates Russell Libby of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. Every calorie of “conventional” food requires about 10 calories of fossil fuel for processing, packaging and transportation.
Eating local is a road less traveled. Here’s a plan to eat well — and affordably — while saving the planet:
1. Visit a local farmers’ market to meet people who grow food in your community. You’ll build a network of contacts that can help you eat better year round.
2. Ask your new farmer friends what is in season and where can you buy it.
3. Buy what you can at farmers’ markets and farm stands, or buy a share in a local farm.
4. At the supermarket, look for in-season produce from local sources.
Following this path is good for our communities, environment and our economy. If every Mainer spends just $10 per week on locally-grown food for six months, we’ll keep $100 million circulating in Maine.
The next step is to help grow more food in your community. Check if local farmers offer community supported agriculture shares.
Sales of farm shares allow your farmer to buy seed and operate the farm. As a shareholder, you’ll reap the benefits of fresh, healthy, local produce direct from the farm. CSA shares are available for vegetables, flowers, and even meat and eggs.
But you’ll find the ultimate in fresh, local and organic food even closer to home — in your own garden or kitchen windowsill. Try herbs in a sunny window, or a container of tomatoes or bell peppers on your porch or patio. Compost your kitchen scraps to keep your soil fertile. Install a rain barrel for a ready supply of fresh water. For an outdoor garden, consider raised beds or a “lasagna” garden—get more vegetables with fewer pests.
Thinking carefully about what you eat, and maybe getting your own hands dirty to grow more local and organic food, makes a difference. Eliot Coleman, perhaps Maine’s most famous organic vegetable gardener, writes that each acre of a small organic farm in Maine can feed 40 people.
Could one of them be you?
Fred Horch is the founder of F.W. Horch Sustainable Goods & Supplies in Brunswick, providing practical products and trustworthy advice that you can use to help save the planet.