Eating Locally
Most food travels an outrageous distance to get to your dinner plate. By actively searching for food produced closer to home you can support your local family farmers, contribute to the local economy and lessen your carbon footprint. Plus, you’ll know where your food comes from and how it has been grown.
Reading and Resources In Oregon
Friends of Family Farmers has recently put out a community resource guide to help communities through the process of working together to strengthen local food systems. Download Tools and Techniques for Effective Organizing.
Read Dan Armstrong’s article, Relocalizing Eden, aka – the Willamette Valley.
Check out Ecotrust’s Food and Farms Program, complete with an organizer’s toolkit for organizing Local Food Networks.
Ecotrust also publishes edible PORTLAND, a celebration of the abundance of local foods, season by season. The Fall 2008 issue has a reprint of Wendell Berry’s “The Pleasures of Eating.” An oldie, but goody by one of our favorite authors!
Read the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies’ report on Planting Prosperity and Harvesting Health: Trade-offs and Sustainability in the Oregon-Washington Regional Food System.
Search the Food for Oregon database and find hundreds of local and regional community food resources.
Portland’s Preserve is a part of a growing community that is committed to sustainable food systems, environmental stewardship and a vision of small-scale production within a true-cost economy. In 2011, they are offering a series of classes devoted to householding.
Reading and Resources Beyond Oregon
Discover 10 Reasons to Buy Food from your Regional Family Farmer. You can also download the brochure here.
Start a “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” chapter in your community with help from the Food Routes toolkit.
View the Cooperative state Research, Education and Extension Service webinar on funding opportunities and successful local food projects.
Take the local food pledge at change.org or through the American Farmland Trust.
Find recipes, news and information at the Sustainable Table.
Envision a sustainable food system, in California and beyond with the Vivid Picture Project.
Print out and carry this handy glossary of terms used for meat processing methods so that you can navigate your meat purchases with accurate information.
Educate yourself on alternative ways to source your meat and eggs with a CSA or buying club!
*Friends of Family Farmers provides these resources solely for educational purposes. Friends of Family Farmers neither favors nor endorses any of the organizations listed on this website, nor are they responsible for any incorrect information that is listed on the hyperlinked external sites.*
