Home Grown

Listen Up

• In this first piece, author and enviromentalist Bill McKibben goes an entire winter eating only local or home-produced foods (8:13) from his local Lake Champlain valley in Vermont, and from this experience ponders questions about the global food system.
• In this second piece, McKibben discusses the ecological implications of his recent boob, Wandering Home -- A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks (7:46)
• The questions McKibben raises in these two pieces can take us in may directions. Here is just one, on locally grown, organic foods (8:37)

Write Now

• Tell us of any experiences you have had with locally grown or produced foods. What about roadside vendors?
• What do you see as the economic advantages to your community of locally produced food or goods generally?
• Gardening is the world’s most popular hobby: any experience with gardening yourself or with gardeners?

Read On

• More from Wikipedia on organic food and autarky (or societies that do not trade)