Event explores ways of eating more from local sources

May 10th, 2010

Transition Town Motueka will hold an exploration of Eating Locally on Saturday May 22nd, with a challenge to Motueka residents to go further in eating what grows within a 100 km radius of home.

The Top of the South Food Challenge is being issued by Ecofest 2010, a Tasman District Council-sponsored initiative, to promote the idea of eating locally. The challenge is to eat only local food between July 16th and August 20th, and then to celebrate by going to Ecofest in Nelson on August 21-22.

Transition Town Motueka, which has been promoting the idea of eating locally for the last couple of years, has picked up this challenge, and want to use the Eating Locally event to firm up on information and concrete methods of achieving the goal.

Eating Locally will be from 12 noon to 3.30pm at Riverside Community and Cultural Centre on the Moutere Highway. Those wishing to attend are invited to bring a potluck dish made with local ingredients, a recipe to share, and ideas on how we can eat and drink more locally.

There will be discussion, children's activities, music (Northern Lights - local of course) and prizes. The team working on this includes Tanja and Florian Pauls and Joanna Santa Barbara. For more information, phone Joanna on .

Asked to explain how Locally Eating works and why it is important, Joanna presents a scenario:

"Okay, so I'm preparing tonight's dinner. Can I do it strictly Top of the South? Pumpkin, potatoes, onions and garlic grown at home, aubergine from the Sunday Market, all roasted in olive oil from Kina and rosemary from by the front door. This will go with pesto from the freezer. That's from our basil and garlic, walnuts from the Motueka Valley, lemons from a friend's garden (I use a bit of the rind too) and more Kina olive oil. Salt is from Marlborough Sounds. Parmesan - uh-oh! is from…Italy. Can anyone tell me of a local substitute?"

Why would anyone bother? What's behind this Eating Locally movement, and its cousins, the Slow Food Movement and the Food Sovereignty Movement?

"Many interwoven strands make up this braid," Joanna explains. "For a start, local food tastes better, and retains nutritional elements at higher levels. A local market will be better able to preserve local particularities, such as heritage varieties, maintaining horticultural biodiversity threatened by agribusiness.

"The shorter distance from producer to consumer enables better information and more control of introduced chemicals such as pesticides and preservatives in food."

The tonnes of food imported to New Zealand, particularly by air freight, contribute substantially to global climate change, she adds. "With expected oil scarcity in the near future, the time to increase the range of local food production capacity is now. Who has a Parmesan substitute? Or should I learn to live without it?"

Then finally there's the strengthening the local economy, with money moving in short local cycles rather than draining off to large corporations, will increase regional health and resilience.

Food Map

Transition Towns Motueka has also been working on creating a Food Map of Motueka and environs, into which they're entering local producers and retailers of local products. "We plan to keep working on this for several months, inviting people to enter more information on the map," Joanna says.

The map can be seen at this link. If anyone wants Joanna to make entries of their information, they can e-mail her at .

"When the map is as complete as we can make it, we'll look for ways to print it in an attractive format for use by residents and tourists. We also hope to interest restaurants in featuring dishes made with local produce."

Part of a network of such groups, Transition Towns Motueka is made up of local people working to move towards a lower energy lifestyle by "re-localising our community, making it resilient and truly sustainable". The community already has several other projects underway, including a community lending program, the local Sunday market, and a program to install gardens in several local households.

Comment by William Cleaver:
[Posted 10 May 2010]
All right then, give it up. So we don't grow coffee in Nelson let alone New Zealand but one of the best Totally Organic Roasters is right on your back door. Resurgence Coffee, 2 School Rd Riwaka.

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