It’s quite the dilemma when it comes to shopping locally because, thanks to several kinds of technology (including transport), it is possible to live just about anyway, but that doesn’t mean that food is available everywhere.

McKibbon, author of “Deep Economy,” has this great chapter on trying to eat local for a year – of course he gives up bananas (he’s on the East Coast) and eventually he has to give up several kinds of grains that simply are produced in his state. It’s a good read and gives a greater, holistic perspective of the consequences of the economic choices we make. I haven’t gotten to the end so I don’t know what his solution is…

But it did get me to reconsider the definition of community and the reality of global citizenship as it pertains to my interaction with, specifically, with the third world. The reason we can transport food in this matter is because we can afford it, plain and simple. We don’t NEED bananas, but we sure like them. Films like Black Gold point out that our PREFERENTIAL consumption comes at a cost of natural resources to those groups that cannot afford to import (or have preference). So what’s the balance?
I grew up hearing my parents tell me to finish what I was eating because there were “starving people in China” (Africa would probably be more appropriate now)… but it’s not like I can ship my leftovers to them, right?