From the Transition Culture website:

A Review of ‘Local Food: how to make it happen in your community’ by Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob Hopkins. Green Books 2009. By James Howard.

There are some people that aren’t that fussed about food. To them it is merely functional, a fuel that keeps them going that appears in a package or on their plate, and very little time or thought is given to it. I cannot begin to understand that mindset. Food is so much more than merely an energy source – it is often a highly sensuous experience, full of variety and the focal point for wonderful social bonding in many forms. Yes, I love food, always thinking about my next meal and who I will enjoy it with.

And yet food is, ultimately, an energy source, vital for human survival. Without treading on the toes of Pinkerton & Hopkins, this essential energy source for our very existence is now largely experienced at the end of a long process requiring the input of unsustainable amounts of fossil fuels that damages the stability of the climate that we require to grow the food! Of solutions offered, re-localisation of food supply is the only sustainable one, and thus explored in the very useful book “Local Food – How to make it happen in your community” by Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob Hopkins.

Local Food is the first book to go into deeper detail following the previous Transition Books which offered more general views. The Transition movement is all about positivity, and it is incredibly positive for people, for groups, for communities, to begin to take control of how their food is supplied, where from, and how it is grown. One of the successes of this book is that it shows that there are so many ways to reconnect with local food, and in so many forms, that there isn’t any excuse really left for not making some step towards local food! As a long-time vegetarian who is supplied via an organic box scheme and buys local/seasonal food if forced into a supermarket, this book showed me that there is so much more I could do. There is no one-size fits all solution to local food, but Tamzin Pinkerton has provided enough shapes for all to fit into.

Read more…

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.