Localvore: You have probably heard the concepts of Carnivore and herbivore, but maybe you are not acquainted with the new term “Localvore”.
Actually, it is a new term among environmentalists that becoming famous these days. It describes a trend that people just use local foods (up to about 100 Miles far from their living area).
Using local foods can cause many benefits for the person, their community, and the environment.
Some people are “hard Localvores”, they won’t eat anything unless it was grown and produced within say, a 100 mile radius from their home.
Others are not as strict, they try to eat locally when they can, but still purchase some groceries from the supermarket. Using of local foods can causes many benefits for the people, society and the environment that continues to some of these are:
Supporting local producers
Consume healthy local foods and fresh products are creating jobs for local farmers and local producers.
Improving of regional economic
By using local foods the local capital would remain locally and it improves the economy and living conditions of producers.
Reduce the cost of transportation and air pollution
Reduced transportation of foods from one area to another will reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gases emissions will be reduced.
Produce less waste
The consumption of local food produced by the consumer from the farm track to meet short and reduced need for warehousing and distribution of food waste produced in the process are consequently reduced.
Consuming of fresh and healthy products
The fresher and healthier local foods have better tastes. On the other hand, Using of fresh food reduces the need for packaging with plastic and metal materials, which will reduce the consumption of fossil fuels.
Because when the gap between production and consuming is too short, the packing with special plastic and metal materials.
Improving the diversity of products
Farmland use with using local products will encourages and farmers and producers to produce the diverse products and it will increase the number of cultivated crops, diversity of the ecosystems and soils.
Tourism
One of the tourist attractions in different areas is the local foods. Eating local can be a factor to improve local food production and it will caused improving tourism industry.
Reducing the tendency to the urbanization
Using of local products and improving in rural economy, can decrease the farmer’s economic problems and the tendency to the urbanization will be decreased.
Traditional medicine perspective on Localvore:
With regards to the differences of traditional medicine preparations that used to treat various diseases based on the region, mainly in each region native medicinal plants are used based on the climate and weather.
Therefore, the traditional medicine views must be consistent with the localvore trends.