Locavores: Eating Alabam blog

My friends from Alabama are embarking on a new adventure, one that involves their minds and stomachs. Their goal is to be “locavores” for 4 months, and consume only food grown in their home state. Their efforts are being documented on the blog Eating Alabama.

In a state like Alabama, where we have one of the longest growing seasons in the country, you would think we would have a strong farm economy. But the only local products in the grocery store down the street are muscadine wines from an Alabama vineyard and bar-b-que sauce from local restaurants. Our produce section is dominated by citrus from California, potatoes from Idaho, asparagus and squash from Mexico, and avocados from Chile. …Some of the chicken is from Alabama, maybe even from a chicken farm up the road. But first it’s shipped to Arkansas for processing before making the trip back to your plate.

We don’t anticipate solving the problems of our industrial agriculture system in the next four months, but we hope to get a better glimpse at small farmers throughout the state who are trying to make a difference. (blog)

Good luck y’all! I am eager to check back with you on your progress and get some more good collards/ greens recipes.

For those not familiar with this new local food movement, Wikipedia explains locavores, the 2007 Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Year, as:

…coined by Jessica Prentice from San Francisco Bay Area on the occasion of World Environment Day 2005 to describe and promote the practice of eating a diet consisting of food harvested from within an area most commonly bound by a 100 mile radius.

The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food, with the argument that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Local grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since supermarkets that import their food use more fossil fuels and non-renewable resources. (wiki)

Tags: alabama, locavore