I’ve decided to join the group of people taking the September Eat Local Challenge.

The idea is that the environmental impact of eating food that has been driven (or flown, or boated, or railed, or multimodally transported) hundreds or thousands of miles from where it originated to my plate is huge. And while it isn’t something most of us can control completely, it is something that we can do that makes a difference.

How it works is this: During the month of September, I’m committing to buying as much of my food as possible from local sources. They recommend defining local as within a 100 mile radius of where you live. I’m going to be flexible on that rule as I think the main source of regional dairy is about 25 miles further out than that.

One group, the Locavores, has this pledge:

If not LOCALLY PRODUCED, then Organic.
If not ORGANIC, then Family farm.
If not FAMILY FARM, then Local business.
If not a LOCAL BUSINESS, then Fair Trade.

It’s going to be a big change for us. That dairy doesn’t produce yogurt, and we’ve been eating a whole lotta fruit from far away places. I haven’t even tried to figure out meat yet.

But, I’m considering a half-share in a CSA, and in exploring the smaller farmers markets in my area. Our big farmers market may be a good place for bread, but a huge number of their products are from outside of the US, to say nothing of outside of northern Georgia.

Also, I’m declaring that food we already have doesn’t count. So the variously sourced frozen and packaged goods we have are still available for September consumption.

I’ll be blogging regular updates about this over the month, and I would love to hear what other people think or have tried along these lines.