Two Canadians decided to “affect global change” by challenging themselves, and now others, to only eat food grown/produced/raised within 100 miles of where each of us lives. Supposedly this will help “save the planet” by reducing pollution while helping out our local farmers.
With all due respect, I have another challenge for the two authors who wish to “affect global change”:
Go to the Philippines and explain to the people who depend on pineapple farming why you are challenging people in other countries to stop buying from them.
Then go to Vietnam and Cambodia and talk to the rice farmers (I have been to Cambodian villages myself); go to Cuba and talk to Cuban sugar cane farmers (I have visited there too); tea farmers in India, China, and Sri Lanka; quinoa farmers in Bolivia. Take your pick. Explain to the people in these places why you wish to take away their sole source of income and drive them further into poverty.
In Colombia, coffee workers had switched to growing crops of coca for the production of cocaine and look where it got Colombia. Eventually the farmers formed co-ops and along with the government fought off the drug cartels. If enough people followed the 100 Mile Diet the coffee farmers and workers in Colombia would be forced to seek out a more profitable crop – likely coca - once again.
In Ecuador there is a cloud-forest reserve near the town of Apuela. This is the Intag region where a local co-op grows organic coffee using sustainable practices. This co-op, along with the sustainable tourism that is being promoted in the region has so far managed to keep a large Canadian mining company from tearing down the cloud forest and mining the copper which is abundant in the area. Take away the coffee and the tourism resulting from it from the local people of Apuela and the mining company will be allowed to rip apart the mountains there, destroying the cloud forest and leaving the local community with nothing when the copper is done.
In Canada’s arctic, such an “100 mile diet” would necessitate the people living off of whales, seals, caribous, white bears, and other animals that we currently seek to protect, as well as decrease the people’s overall health by limiting or eliminating essential vitamins and minerals from their diets that they obtain from “imported” foods such as wheat, carrots, potatoes, etc.
I appreciate what the authors are trying to accomplish, but I feel that their “global change” is too short-sighted and introverted. If enough people follow their lead, regions that are already impoverished and have been making strides in improvements will be forced back into practices that are destructive of their environments and of their social structures which have been slowly improving over the past few decades.
It would seem to me that a more balanced approach would be to buy within 100 miles when such a product is available, IE that are grown in our areas – examples, meat, veggies, fruit, dairy, etc – while still buying coffee, sugar, tea, fruits, grains, etc that are NOT grown in our own local area. This would support our local farmers, reduce transportation needs, while at the same time continue to support the more impoverished areas by providing them a market for their products which are their sole source of employment and income.
In our strive to affect global change, we need to assess how our choices will affect not only our immediate area, but how our choices ultimately affect other people around the world. We should seek out choices that reduce our negative effects on the environment as well as our negative effects on societies throughout the world. We need to seek out places and people like the Intag region of Ecuador as examples of people who are making a positive difference by protecting the cloud forest from destruction while at the same time building an organic sustainable agricultural employer for their local workers while we provide a market for them to sell their product, thereby sustaining them in their efforts. This is the overall mutually-beneficial system that will reduce poverty, protect the environment, and build a better world for everyone together as partners.
