grassroots and beetroots
Since returning home to an environment where I'm at least sharing responsibility for the provision and production of my meals, I've been making an effort to buy locally-grown produce.
Working on small-time organic farms (through WWOOF) in Spain earlier this year, I had a great introduction into the world of family farms and a more natural and sustainable means of agriculture. I'm doing my best to hang onto the habits and ideals I inherited.
An interesting parallel is drawn in the O'Reilly-hosted interview, Supporting Family Farms with Open Source Software, by Guillermo Payet, of LocalHarvest(.org):
Both open source proponents and "buy local" people are advocates of diversity and the absence of centralized control. There is the idea in both realms of the underdog fighting the status quo to build a better world that empowers individuals and offers wider choice. It's been great for me to use tools built by a virtual community of hackers to build a system that strengthens real geographical communities, and that in some ways embodies such a similar system of ethics.
-- Guillermo Payet
LocalHarvest "makes it easy to find family farms, farmers markets and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area."
I'm inspired when I see the internet adopted in this way. Individual empowerment, health, and ecological sustainability brought about by technology, (sometimes a seemingly lifeless and unnatural enterprise.)
comments
its a good idea, just not so many locally grown jalapenos.
-- melvin (September 18, 2003 7:44 PM)
seriously...
my body was NOT happy with me today.
I even had to throw my contacts away. After repeatedly washing my hands and thoroughly rinsing the lenses, I still managed to transfer some of the hottness when I took them out last night -- and burned the hell outta my eyes this morning.
-- jeff (September 18, 2003 8:17 PM)
hot shit
-- melvin (September 20, 2003 5:43 PM)