Food is among our most basic human needs. 200 years ago in the US, everyone ate local food, and farming was a primary profession. However, industrial agriculture has distanced us from the hands that grow and process our food. If you are over 60 you’ve seen, in your lifetime, your food shifting from local to industrial. We’ve become more and more disconnected from the knowledge of where our food comes from. Can making some small commitment to eating within a radius of where we live help to turn the tide toward sustainable living and help reconnect us to community? In this deep dialogue we will explore some of the following questions: Is “eating local” an act of honoring the hands and lands that feed us? Can we enjoy a more healthy lifestyle by eating food that is grown close to home? Is eating local food an ethical and spiritual issue? Why is eating from your bioregion good for you, good for your community, and good for the planet? Vicki Robin gives us insight as to what it means to eat local, “We have completely lost contact with a diet that’s appropriate to place …A ‘place-based’ diet locates you somewhere. It grounds you somewhere and when you’re grounded somewhere, you care about the place and because you care about the place, suddenly, you’re engaged in place making…You care and when people care about their place, they make different choices.”
