Submitted by Sustainable Connections
As Eat Local Month draws to a close, Sustainable Connections encourages Bellingham and Whatcom County residents to launch into eating local year-round by participating in a 10-Day Local Food Challenge.
Initiated by Vicki Robin, a Whidbey Island author who wrote about her experiences taking on a 10-mile local food diet in her latest book, Blessing the Hands that Feed Us, the 10-Day Local Food Challenge is an opportunity to support local farms and food producers by eating a diet within 100 miles as a part of a greater community effort.
The Challenge encourages participants to:
1. Select 10 days in October 2014 when you will commit to eating food sourced within 100 miles (or less) of your home.
2. Give yourself 10 exotics or foods from afar you can’t live without.
3. Sign up on the Local Food Challenge website: localfoodchallenge.org
4. Take an opening survey before you begin and a closing survey after you finished your challenge.
The Local Food Challenge website provides a how-to guide, including many tools, resources and links to help with eating locally and even created a Facebook Group to help support participants. “We hope our community will join us in this challenge to eat more locally, a chance to learn more about seasonal food, meet more local farmers, connect with the community, and in turn strengthen our local economy,” Sustainable Connections’ Food & Farming Program Manager Sara Southerland says.
The Local Food Challenge hopes to learn important data from participant surveys in order to improve the local food system: What obstacles are in the way of eating local? Are our local food systems currently sturdy? What needs to change for our society to return to eating locally?
“Right now, only about 2-4 percent of the food consumed in Whatcom County is actually grown or raised locally,” Southerland says. “A long term shift to 10% of food coming from local farm products grown, caught or made in Whatcom County would mean $50 million more circulating back into our local economy each year.”
Whatcom County participants of the 10-Day Local Food Challenge can find additional resources about eating local at eatlocalfirst.org.
