Take the Locavore challenge ?

[KurtNYC]

I am getting ready to sponsor campaign to encourage more people to eat locally grown food. One thing we have come up with is the idea of a "locavore challenge."

To participate you would set your own perimeter (50 miles, 20, 100 miles) and for 2 weeks try to eat nothing but food which was produced in that area. We would support participants by supplying a list of local farms and producers which is sorted by their distance from us. It would be kind of like a 5K -- good for you even if you don't "win."

We are thinking that you would just register, get the list and go to it. The "winner" would be the person or family who is able to eat well while using the fewest total food miles (or highest percentage of their diet from the nearest sources). We want to create an easy way for people to document their performance. The winner would get $100 worth of credit at our farmer's market. And we would share success stories on who did well and how they did it.

Any thoughts, reactions or ideas would be appreciated. We are still brainstorming for how and whether this would work.

[HopeHoops]

1. That isn't really possible here. We've got about a sixth month dead period.

We preserve a lot of our own food and almost live on it during the late summer months, but it isn't enough to make it through the winter and nothing is going to grow, even with the warm weather we've been having.

[KurtNYC]

2. We were thinking of doing this in June or later

Our farmer's market re-opens this weekend. We have eggs, milk, lamb, beef, deer, turkey, duck, chicken, yogurt, wine, apples, herbs, cheese and some cellared vegetables year round.

We have a list of promotions and some will happen before then. We want to do tastings and teach-ins early in the season.

[HopeHoops]

3. Ours is open year round, but they have to get produce from elsewhere in the winter.

My favorite stand makes it exactly clear where things come from and they try to get as close to home as possible until their own crops are ready.

[pitohui]

4. this is possible year round in new orleans, my friend did it

i can't remember what month she did it, maybe november

i can't afford it but props to her

also we don't have good wine local produced in louisiana, and i no longer drink beer (we do have good local beer) so i would never stick to it anyway since i've quit beer and rarely drink the hard stuff, and our local wine is too sweet for drinking w. dinner

on the other hand do you guys in new york have any decent coffee? i don't know if you have coffee that far north...

seems like beverages are a deal breaker to the locavore movement

i think in olden times when people "drank" locally they drank whatever bad ale or wine they had in their area and in the last century we've developed our tastes too much for that, we want our coffee (or maybe a good tea) in the AM and a good glass with our dinner

i forgot to say, my friend's group had a challenge where ALL they consumed for the month was local, our local starch is rice, there is french bread made here, community coffee and other coffee here, lots of local seafood and some chicken (barely) in mississippi that is within the 100 mile radius, there is always some kind of fresh food, fruit, mushrooms, etc., so the only problem i really saw was costs and i just don't like my local wine

[KurtNYC]

5. We have guys refilling growlers (sp?) here and a winery

apple juice is year round and milk and that's pretty much all that would qualify. So we should give more consideration to beverages because I could see it being a deal breaker.