March 10, 2010:
2010 EAT LOCAL! Campaign Launched in Boulder County
“A local food and farming revolution is already underway, as citizens across Boulder County are quietly beginning to completely rebuild our local foodshed,” says Michael Brownlee, “Catalyst” for Transition Colorado, a Boulder-based non-profit organization which is launching a county-wide EAT LOCAL! Campaign featuring a 10% Local Food Shift Challenge and Pledge.
Initiated in 2007, the ten-year campaign is designed to expand the capacity of our local food system and promote closer connections between community members and those who grow our food. The campaign pesents positive pathways to engage citizens, communities, businesses, and local governments to take the far-reaching actions that are required to strengthen the local food and farming system.
Since the campaign’s inception, many positive changes have already arisen across the county, whether either directly or indirectly stimulated by the EAT LOCAL! campaign:
- Restaurants using locally-grown food have increased ten-fold.
- Boulder County government formed a Food and Agriculture Policy Council.
- Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscriptions have increased exponentially.
- The Boulder County Farmers’ Market is now one of the top 10 in the country.
- Boulder County is now a major hub for permaculture training and practice.
- The Boulder County Community Gardens now have a growing waiting list of people wanting garden plots.
- Transition Colorado alone provided 10,000 people hours of Great Reskilling courses
EAT LOCAL! Resource Guide & Directory
The campaign is supported by the newly-published Boulder County’s EAT LOCAL! RESOURCE GUIDE & DIRECTORY, with 10,000 copies now in distribution, and another 30,000 to be printed in early summer. This 36-page publication features a comprehensive listing of all the local food sources and local food supporters in the area, including CSAs, dairy and eggs, herbs and flowers, honey, meat and fish, plants/seeds and supplies, produce, water, wine and mead; plus farmers’ markets, gardens, grocers and retailers, organizations and community services, permaculture design, restaurants and caterers, schools and training.
In the EAT LOCAL! Guide (available online at www.EatLocalGuide.com), readers will also find a series of useful and inspiring articles about the challenges and opportunities in the local food system, which together constitute a kind of manifesto for a local food and farming revolution, including:
- Why Eat Local?
- The Boulder County EAT LOCAL! Campaign
- The Local Foodshed: Where Does Our Food Come From?
- “What can I do? Where do I start?”
- Towards a Boulder County Food Summit
- What Is Sustainable Agriculture?
- The Promise of Transition
- Boulder County Farmer Cultivation Center
- Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered
10% LOCAL FOOD SHIFT Challenge and Pledge
The Guide also introduces Transition Colorado’s key focus for the 2010 EAT LOCAL! Campaign: a 10% Local Food Shift Challenge, encouraging individuals, families, restaurants, and institutions to make an online pledge to shift 10 percent of their food budget to local food.
“The economic impact of this Local Food Shift could be considerable,” says Brownlee. “According to a 2009 study, Boulder County consumers spend more than $660 million buying food each year, but less than one percent of that is going to local growers.”
Campaign Mission
The overarching mission of the EAT LOCAL! campaign is to catalyze a more resilient local food system for Boulder County, based on deep ecological principles and a more connected populace, with far less dependence on fossil fuels and petroleum-based inputs.
“We are learning that not only can all this greatly reduce the amount of fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions embedded in today’s food from fertilizers, pesticides and transport,” says Brownlee, “but adopting a more local organic diet will greatly contribute to our health and our children’s health.”
As part of the EAT LOCAL! campaign, Transition Colorado also provides a variety of community events, speakers and panel discussions, documentary film screenings, and community forums and dialogues. The organization has delivered some 10,000 people-hours of Great Reskilling instruction, covering practical life skills from growing, cooking and canning food, to permaculture design courses.
