LOCOVORISM

I promised a post on the term locovore.

Well, I don't have a specific definition in front of me, but here it goes.

Locovorism is a fairly old, yet resurging move towards eating / consuming what is only available close to you. Instead of going to a big box store to buy your bread, you either make it yourself or go to your local small bakery to purchase bread that is made right there. Instead of consuming tomatoes from venezuala when you live in Utah, you only eat them if they are grown in Utah. Thus you eat in season, foods that are picked and healtiest as well as keeping your money local.

For instance, if we still lived in Eugene, our veggies and more would be from the weekly farmers markets. Locally grown greens, mushrooms, honey, breads, cheeses and the like. The nice thing about this is you support LOCAL economy rather than some slave driver in China or Indonesia. There is also more of a chance that you KNOW what is in the food and such that you buy rather than plastic in your food or possible salmonella poisoning from some processing plant.

It's a proven fact in todays economy that those who are growing food for the BIG PRODUCTION of commercial growers, either don't care how they fertilize the food they are growing or they have just too much growing to pay attention to it all. This leaves it wide open for us to get salmonella, botulism and other nasties into our food supply.

Local growers grow LESS at once, so they can keep an eye on it, and they CARE more so that there is less chance of these nasties getting into the food chain.

The gigantic plus to this movement is that the money earned in Oregon, stays in Oregon longer.

Each person / family decides how close to home they are going to eat. Some say U.S. food only. This is nice, since you can't really grow oranges, lemons or limes here in the pacific northwest, and potatoes really don't like to grow too well in florida / southern california. Others say their same state. So for us, if it didn't grow in Oregon, then we wouldn't ingest it. This cuts out stuff like pineapple, oranges, lemons, limes, baking soda and a few other things. I don't think there are salt mines in Oregon either. lol. Some, go for so many miles from home. 100 miles, 50 miles or whatever. If you can't drive within that amount of space and get it then you don't bring it home.

I have had the privilage since we moved to meet a lot of people who follow this way of consuming. Some do it Conscientiously, it's good for our planet after all. And some of the people I have met do it because it's all they can afford to feed themselves is what they grow themselves. One of these wonderful people I met grows over 90% of the food they eat themselves. They trade butchering of livestock for some of that meat, and what they don't grow, they buy from others locally who grew it themselves organically. It's a pretty great way to live if you ask me. They don't own vast tracs of land, only 20 acres, and they don't have row after row of greenhouses to do this either. It can be done, even on only the 2 acres that hubby and I live on. But it's going to take US a little while longer to get there. lol. our land is mostly sand.

Even someone who lives in an apartment can grow some of their own food. While they may not be able to approach this 90% self sustainablilty in their food supply, every little bit will make a difference.

As a people, we need to do more to support our own self and stop being so reliant on other nations and countries to supply us with food and goods. It's here in our own countries. It doesn't matter if you live in the United States, Canada, England, Australia or anywhere else, we can all attain a great amount of self-sustainability on our own. It doesn't matter what it is, just something. Grow a few chickens and trade their eggs off, grow up 4 tomato plants and swap for some corn.. It doesn't take much. So you can't grow food to save your life (no pun intended), but you can cross stitch some of the most beautiful samplers in the area? Trade a sampler for some of your neighbors garden, or a home cobblers shoes, or for some car maintenance. It's a simple thing. And something we owe to ourselves.

Locovorism is a good thing, and with a little rearranging, and adjusting to our lives it's also something we all can do.

Here's some links where you can learn more and connect with others doing the same thing: