Foodsheds are cool.

Here's a tip: don't go to the farmer's market late. Went there at close to noon and came home with a sad bunch of onions and a pretty but slightly worm-holed eggplant. Oh, there was lots of okra but I've learned my lesson from the last batch I got at the farmar's, and lots of tomatoes but I'm not much of a tomato eater -- maybe if I ate more local ones...

You know, it's funny -- you can find a universal site about almost any environmental or community-oriented issue except foodsheds. Different from a watershed (here's a link to my post about watersheds) but the same concept, e.g. what are the food sources in your area?

I've been thinking and working on getting more of my groceries from local sources and got hooked up with this cool Google spreadsheet made up by some nice people in my area. It has all of the local farms within 100 miles of our part of Florida, and it also has a list of all the restaurants that use local products in their menu items.

Anyway, I tried to find out more info about foodsheds and figured there would be some association or something. But no, there are individual sites devoted to a particular region, like this site about a foodshed in NJ called the Foodshed Alliance. I linked to their mission statement page because I think it says a lot about the philosophy of the foodshed. Here is another link to a Canadian site called the Foodshed Project that provides a pretty comprehensive definition of a foodshed and a breakdown of the issues involved in "food security."

The only site I could find that was near our region is a blogspot blog called Foodshed by a woman in Georgia who is totally all about the foodshed. It's cool because the blog's motto is "For those who want to know who grew their melons," and has these links to "Virtual Trips to Farms" videos -- how cool!

Before I sign off I wanted to also send this link to a dissenting view about foodsheds and the 100-Mile Diet phenom, by a gourmand writing on Suite 101. Just presenting both sides of the argument...