Local Food Plus featured on TasteTO.com
Posted: November 3, 2009
Categories: Food in the News / News from Sustain Ontario
http://www.tasteto.com/2009/11/02/local-food-plus-sustaining-the-local-food-movement/
A restaurant devotes 10 percent of its total food costs to suppliers certified for their use of sustainable production methods. A student decides only meat from animals raised in healthy, humane conditions is acceptable for dinner. A busy family buys prepared meals from a company using a mix of locally sourced and fair-trade ingredients. A school lunch program includes on its menu dairy products derived from farms eschewing the use of hormones and antibiotics on livestock.
On its own, not one of these acts of eating represents a radical departure, the kind of all-or-nothing approach to local food consumption some have come to expect in the wake of well-known projects such as the 100-Mile Diet and its television spinoff, the 100-Mile Challenge. Rather, these diverse, incremental changes towards a sustainable food system foster a movement with a long view. And it’s precisely that kind of steady, long-term growth that interests Local Food Plus (LFP) according to Chris Alward, the organization’s Director of Market Development. “A peak of activity is indicative of a fad, not sustained interest,†he says. “Involvement that follows a natural progression and grows at a comfortable pace is what builds a community. Individuals and businesses do what they can when they can. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but ‘annualization’ creates significant improvements over time.†Though Alward is describing the gradual, sustainable expansion of the local food movement, he could well be describing the growth of LFP itself.
Article continued at http://www.tasteto.com/2009/11/02/local-food-plus-sustaining-the-local-food-movement/