Land Management
Geography and the 100 Mile Diet
The 100 Mile Diet is a concept based around the idea of eating locally. Those who do are often referred to as locavores. This approach supports locally grown food, thereby supporting local producers, small business operators and commercial operations. The ramifications of 100 Mile Diet alter the production, and particularly the transportation of food and the kinds of food people eat.
Mapping technologies can be applied to the approach, not only for delineating (buffering) distances from source, but also as a means to administer, record and monitor locally grown food.
Some people have commented on the fact that some geographic areas may be naturally low in certain nutrients in their food supply. Sulphur, potassium, iodine and copper may be lacking in some regions due to soil types. Accordingly, 100 mile diets take in account natural variations in naturally occuring nutrients in the food system, then can be used t0 manage nutritional habits. Conversely, over abundance or some nutrients may be present in some regions.
The idea here is to manage the balance using a regional approach. Other considerations include cost, climate, energy use and moisture.
Wouldn't it be interesting to see a map of foodstuffs and their origins for major cities as compared to rural areas?
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4 comments for “Geography and the 100 Mile Diet”
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For a book I’m doing about the benefits of eating locally, it would be good to customize each chapter for geographic regions. For example, the chapter for “June” would provide sources and a recipe for blueberries. Depending on where the reader lives, where are they in season? If they are in the Southwest, what recipe and sources would I provide for June? Is this something that can be approached geospatially?
Hi Mary,
I like your idea. Yes, geospatial tools would be ideal to approach the issue of type of food by month / season.
You would need to go to your local agriculture department (and or know the berry patches around your area) — you can locate them with a inexpensive GPS.
Historical maps and charts may also have this kind of information.
Put the information into a map system and then you can simply query it by food type, month, etc. It will produce a map of monthly ‘abundance’ (my term) showing where, type and when the food is available.
This would make a great book — very interesting.
Let me know if you need more help.
Cheers
@Mary
Have you seen the following site? It may be relevant/helpful. It has links to directories by state, some of which have a map interface. I try to eat fairly local, but here, in Minnesota, the selection of local foods in January really narrows down!
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/localfood_dir.php
A while back my friend Matt created a great poster that got me thinking about the scalability of a 100 mile diet ( http://contours-coregis.blogspot.com/2008/07/sustainable-ballard-local-food.html ).
The national land cover database is obviously a crude source for estimating cultivable land (pea patches, backyard veggie gardens, etc are not included). But I thought it was an interesting thought experiment, and figured automating this type of analysis could let you do all kinds of things, such as analyzing which cities are both nicely urban and walkable (walkscore.com) and conducive to the 100 mile diet.
To that end landsummary.com is a start on this idea. Draw an arbitrary polygon (or choose a point and buffer distance) to get estimates on population and agricultural land. Hope you enjoy.