"What is local?" or "I Haven't Started Making My Own Pet Food... Yet"

So just exactly what is local anyway? Is it the distance you can drive and return home on one tank or on one gallon of gas? Is it how far you can travel by bicycle or on foot comfortably? Does it mean within your own town, or within a specific radius of miles? I think you see where I'm going with this. It can be a complicated equation. And I'll throw another variable at you. Does it have to be the same for everything you are sourcing? 

I'll be completely honest with you. I haven't started making my own pet food..... yet, nor am I buying  it from someone who does at prices rivaling a New York strip steak. But I have stopped buying it from the grocery store and started to buy it from my local family owned feed store. At least that way I know that profits on the purchase will stay in my community. So my pet food purchase is advancing one of my localization goals. It is improving the health of my local economy. But economic health is not the only goal of localization. I personally think that too much focus on the economy is the cause of many environmental, social and humanitarian crises around  the world. 

So I'll get to the point.. In considering what is local I want to think about how far it has traveled, if it was produced ethically (meaning humans and animals were not harmed or exploited in its production), and if it was produced in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner. I'll look first in my own town and neighboring communities, next I'll try to keep it within my own state or region if possible and if I can 't find it there I will see if I can find a reasonable substitute (like substituting prunes for raisins). Before I go much farther afield I'll ask myself if I can do without it. I'm betting that in most cases I can find a reasonable substitute or do without, but there may be some times that I need to go a bit further. At each step it is important to remember to look for products that are ethically and environmentally produced. 

One example of a real challenging product is coffee. Since there is no coffee grown in the continental US, what does one do if they just can't seem to give up their coffee habit?  I've found a pretty good substitute for coffee that is made with a mixture of herbs and spices, but some folks don't have my taste for it and sometime I want a real cup of coffee myself. I'm fortunate in that we have a coffee roaster here in town. So you find yourself the nearest coffee roaster that roasts organic free trade coffee and you drink a bit less of it, because it does cost more than the other stuff and because, after all, you are trying to reduce your carbon footprint. You sit back and enjoy your locally roasted, organic, free trade coffee and you are happy because you made a decision not based purely on how much it cost YOU, RIGHT NOW but on what it will cost the planet and its current and future inhabitants if you don't stop to think before you spend. You sip and you smile. You did good.

No I haven't started making my own pet food yet but, at some point, I probably will, once I work out my own food storage plan and can make a little room in the freezer. I hear you asking, "why would you do that?" Well, I'll tell you... in another post :-) 

My pet. He's definitely cute enough to deserve home-made pet food