I'm not sure about anywhere else, but in my home town of Courtenay, you are allowed to keep two chickens (hens only, no roosters) in a fenced yard on your property. If you've got a couple of good layers, you can have fresh eggs every morning and excellent fertilizer for your vegetable garden.

I'm not vegetarian, but think that one could follow such a diet and live healthily, in particular, if they had a suitable area to garden.

The secret has to be in exploiting the many methods of preserving foods when they are in abundance.

ameynert, that's a great idea. I'd love to do that - in fact, if the bylaws allow in my area, I will likely look into it. The major obstacle I can see is having the chickens live in harmony with our multiple cats and the racoon next door...

ameynert, Rhea,

I recall with fondness a bantam chicken in wartime England that came into the house, claimed a spot on top of the firescreen frame and became quite the house pet. Like many. we kept a few rabbits outside in hutches.
These not only provided delicious meat, but fur for gloves and mittens etc - plus, of course, manure for the productive garden.

Talking of rabbits, it was recently suggested that a couple of rabbits is adequate to heat a small greenhouse. Makes sense to me. I imagine that even placing the seed flats on top of the hutches could gain a month on the growing season.

Feeding chickens with locally grown feed is only possible in areas where such feed can grow. Not here in the Cariboo, and a very large part of BC, where we have 5 months of snow cover and cold. Grain just doesn't ripen in this climate, so we have to buy our chicken feed, most likely coming from the Praeries.

On the other hand, we now have about 80, or so, some just hatched this morning. Most of them will be butchered, some sold. We usually keep 30 or so layers and Banties. When we have to eat store bought, factory eggs, they just about turn our stomachs. They look and taste like garbage, which they are, from birds locked up in tony cages, hardly able to stand up or turn around. Utterly disgusting and cruel.

With rabbits heating greenhouses, again it could only be done in milder climates, but I do have problem with the number "2". Chickens have also been used to heat greenhouses, but the numbers should be far more. We have a 6' x 12'
chicken house, fully insulated, like a house,with an 1 1/2" thick plywood door. With 30-40 grown birds we still have to put a heatlamp on when the temperature goes below
-20 C, or the birds suffer and their combs freeze off. A greenhouse, with a large glass front, where the heat can escape, would freeze their toes off.

We have an approx 1/2 acre chicken yard filled with Saskatoon berry bushes, where the chickens can roam around, scratching, living naturally, having a good time, which they repay with excellent eggs and meat not found in supermarkets, filled with artificially pumped up eggs and birds. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

I like this article and series, for the realistic view it takes.

"Political" vegetarians who fail to recognize the impact that their choices have in the big picture are as much a problem as people who buy all their groceries at Wal-Mart in flash frozen packages.

I doubt if the 100-mile diet would be sustainable for our entire city; the reality of cities is that need far more food products input than could possibly be produced in the space they occupy.

I used to order groceries from SPUD, and would highly recommend it for a couple. When I was cooking for two, it was a great way of ordering healthy, locally produced products and avoiding car based trips to the grocery store. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them again.

You can check out more information about the UBC farm on their website here:
http://www.agsci.ubc.ca/ubcfarm/

You can check out more information about Salt Spring Seeds and Dan Jason here:
http://www.saltspringseeds.com/

I'm sorry to be a stick-in-the-mud, but the 100 mile diet seems to be the flakiest, most absurd new concept to emerge from the Luddite Left Coast in ages.
Believing 'the cataclysmic ecological costs of shipping food around the world' is of concern reveals a thoroughly decadant, pampered filter on one's outlook. The 100% organic local produce was already delivered on wind powered sailing ships that spread rats, foriegn seeds and disease long ago. Smallpox to the East, plague and syphilis to the West and Norwegian rats everywhere.
One would be far more succesful sticking to a 100 mile diet in a lush African plain, but it doesn't seem to work there either as the airdrops and UN convoys will attest.
I will continue to trade trout from my lake for salmon from the ocean or chocolate from Belgium regardless to whether they are delivered by truck or back-packed over the old Grease Trail for two reasons.
So I don't have to eat the same thing day after day.
Because that's the way the world works, by things that move. Spices, food, people, money and data.

Herbie,
While I'm not obsessed with the 100-mile thing I think the series has, resulted in useful discussion, and will continue to do so. Also, there are numerous benefits to favouring local produce.

How can one not relate transportation to the often-excessive cost of a food item?. One need only look at the many dairy products sold in B.C. from Quebec, for instance.

An equally useful discussion might be held on the role of marketing boards, that we're told exist to ensure "orderly marketing".

Trade is a necessary fact of life, but commerce for profits is not trade. Why do we have to import beef, chickens, sheep, grains, etc. from NZ, Australia, or why has NZ just declared that they can now import Canadian beef, when they have millions of their own?

The whole sytem is designed to put a few multinationals, like Tyson, Monsanto and Cargill into control of the world's food production. The problem is not the necessary exchange of certain products, spices, etc. but the total idiocy of carting huge amounts of products around that could and can be produced locally. The vast majority of manufactured products can be made just about anywhere resources are available. Even at that, it is easier and long term cheaper to transport raw materials for local production, than to transport it across the seas, than bring them back, so that Pattison can buy another yacht.

The main purpose of monetary neoclassical economics is the distortion of values and using fraudulent figures to transfer the real costs onto other sectors, the environment and the future. E.g. If a product costs $50. to make in Canada, but we can import it for $10. from China, the ultimate cost to the Canadian and world economy will be $50. or more, in the forms of unemployment, sickness, stress, pollution, global warming, etc. Therefore, costs can not be cut, only transferred. This is unbreakable. We all learn this in highschool in the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.

Today's economic calculations are fraudulent, because they only look at the present and the next quarterly balance sheet, which they call "bottom line". There are no bottom lines in real life economics, because the costs of everything begin and end in infinity.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Hey Herbie:

How much energy is used to transport your Belgian chocolates? Is oil involved? How much do you think the price of oil will be in 5 years?

I am sure you will be buying and growing locally in the near future and probably going back to the grease trail to trade for salmon soon!

Ever hear about Hubbert's Peak.

Will the U.S. and China soon come to "blows" over oil (see Unocal)?

Freebear makes a semi-valid point. Today you can see the effect of oil prices, but that has caused the docks to be overflowing with rotten foods from China because the cost effect is focused on the last 100 miles of delivery. The increased cost of oil spread over a shipload is minor, spead over a truckload is significant.
This can be pointed out with the Belgian chocolate which is probably delivered by ship in containers, vs. the Cadbury chocolate which is trucked from Ontario.
The environmental cost is better addressed by improved end-product delivery, trains are more efficient than trucks. Unfortunately that jeopardized millions of jobs driving, selling, building and servicing the trucking industry.
What to do?
You can't apply the 100 mile rules to 99% of the earth's surface. The areas where it could be done can't sustain 6 billion people.
So why research a theory knowing it can't be applied to the big picture'.

I think the strict 100 mile diet idea is a bit nutty, to be perfectly honest. But I do try to buy locally grown/produced food, because it tastes so much better when it doesn't sit in transit. Living downtown in Vancouver, I really miss having a vegetable garden. Sadly, the West End community garden people won't give me a plot because I live in Yaletown and there's already high demand from closer neighbourhoods. Oh well, we're moving to a country town in England in January, and hopefully I can get a plot in one of the community allotment gardens for the spring.

Herbie:

So how does the ingredients for the Belgian chocolate arrive at the "Chocolatiers" in Belgium?

My point is that the dependence on oil in all aspects of our modern lives will mean not to long into the future we will have to produce our own energy, including food energy, locally, as the price of oil rises. Livlihoods will change, including those of "truckers"

Nationally and regionally, yes there may be renewed use of railways. Yes there will be job losses and changes, but keeping unsustainable jobs will not be an option. Just as President Bush's point of not adopting the Kyoto Protocol because it would hurt the U.S. economy will not be an option.

Cheers,

It's a very interesting series of articles, but I agree that the concept of the 100 mile diet is fairly "out there" in terms of practicality - at least for your average urban or suburban family.

In practical terms, people are better off buying locally when they can, and making responsible choices when buying other products. For example, you can't buy locally grown grain, but you can get locally milled flour, and you can choose to buy Avalon or Island Farms dairy products rather than those imported from the US or Quebec.

I used to be a SPUD customer, but I found the produce quality unsatisfactory and hated not being able to see it before it arrived. I can get better organic produce cheaper at the local market or in my garden. Now I use them for large, infrequent orders of products I can't get elsewhere, like locally milled organic flours and organic sugar.

This isn't even a bit nutty. It's an experiment.

The guy who did "Supersize Me" wasn't saying that everyone should eat only at McDonalds. The guy who wrote "Black Like Me" wasn't recommending that every white person should take skin-darkening medication and move to the US south.

Just so, these authors certainly aren't recommending that everyone else follow the 100-mile diet. It seems that they're doing mostly to see what they find out -- whether it's even possible to live in a modern city the way the bulk of humanity has lived throughout history.

Now, I'm not at all sure how important it is from an environmental standpoint to buy local. I've seen too many conflicting estimates of how much environmental damage actually results from long-distance food transport -- some research seems to suggest it's a big deal, others not so much. I'd even be willing to believe that, on balance, it's better for the planet to buy food from distant places where yields are high and energy costs are low, rather than buying local.

But as far as I can tell, that's all moot here. The point isn't to somehow prove that it's better to do one thing or another (though the authors may have opinions on the matter). Instead, it's to test whether it's even plausible to think about living as our ancestors did, and see what kind of interesting stories result.

In addition to what Clark Williams-Derry has said above, regarding this being an experiment, I would add that it also gives us some perspective on what changes we might support.

In our car-driven society, the suburban sprawl is continuing to eat up farm land. Plus, many existing farms are having difficulties competing with the Agri-business competition. To me, the first order of priority is to support local farmers and support local farm land.

Secondly, I have recently become aware of a couple of co-operative farms, and at least one of them is under subscribed. What this means is that for a $5,000 share purchase, you can lease a portion of land and raise crops that this article identifies as currently missing from local sources. I'm sure that if there was more local demand for organic produce, other land, some lying fallow, might be farmed instead of being sold to a real estate developer.

And why should we even consider doing this? Well, I can imagine a couple of scenarios where we would be very pleased that we could feed ourselves from local produce. One being when, and not if, the global casino known as the 'world financial markets' collapses in a battle of warring computers. Another is when the dinosaur economy becomes the warring economy, fighting for access to scarce resources, including oil.

I agree that this is a great series of articles and I look forward to the coming sections.

OK, maybe I wasn't too clear. I meant that this seems to me to be taking an idea to the extreme edge of probability to see where it breaks down. I realize this is an experiment, and one that has some interesting questions to ask about how sustainable it is living in a city where farmland is rapidly disappearing. I thought Supersize me was a nutty experiment too. :) None of this means that we can't get good data from it.

I prefer to support local farmers as much as possible because keeping local farms viable and active businesses prevents them from being paved over and developed, losing the farmland forever. Plus rising oil prices mean rising food prices. The closer you buy to the source, the less oil you use in transporting the goods to where you are. Peak oil doesn't just mean less oil for cars - it means less oil for fertilizers, for trucking food from distant places, and a host of other stuff we take for granted.

A recent author interview in Salon.com takes up the agricultural industry and why buying locally is so important.
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2005/07/15/pyle/index.html

My reading of the article is that the author is aware that the diet is stretching practicality, but seem to be more of an experiment in order to challenge themselves and learn more and that is a good thing. By this series they want to challenge peoples daily habitats and force them to consider alternatives.

My cousins live in Beaver valley near Big Lake and raise cattle and Bison. They have been working toward getting “organic” status for their meat, however they said the market is small and hard to get the product there and make money. I might be passing through there soon and will have a talk with them on what their status is and whether they are selling locally.

I do love the Jerky that they sell at the store across from the Junkyard on Hwy 97 at 150 mile house. It’s almost impossible to find good jerky here in Vancouver.

Speaking of growing Wheat and other grains, I have noticed a steady increase in Hay production near Ft Nelson over the last 7 years.

I agree with Rhea.

Oil dependence is in everything we do and we need to kick the habit of fossil fuel dependency, before it kills this planet!

Hey check out a story on the cost of transporting food. Google Guardian Unlimited home.

Vegetarianism is a contentious issue. The bottom line seems to be that those who enjoy meat will find all sorts of excuses to avoid not eating it.

I am more comfortable with someone who butchers their own chickens that have been grain-free/free-range fed, or shoots (with bow and arrow, please) their own wild deer, or eats free-range goats that have been keeping invasive exotic plants at bay. (In true permaculture fashion, the chickens and goats are multiple-use resources, not factory-farm meat.) And as an experiment, the "100 mile diet" may indeed seem to rule out vegetarianism, due only to an arbitrary rule.

But the argument that vegetarianism is somehow less "green" simply because you haven't found a way to do it on a 100 mile diet has lots of holes -- especially if the justification for the 100 mile diet energy use.

It takes at least ten times as much energy to produce vegetable protein as it takes to run it through an animal. [Pimentel, Cornell University, et. al.] Therefore, I would submit that if the rationale for your 100 mile diet is energy conservation, you should expand it to a 1,000 mile diet for certain forms of vegetable protein that are difficult to obtain within the 100 mile limit.

If you manage to find local meat, fed locally, just 100 miles away, it might as well have been vegetable protein from 1,000 miles away, based on the energy consumed to produce it.

My early years were in the 1930s in northern Alberta. We grew everything we ate, with a few exceptions; salt, sugar, baking powder, etc. All farm work was done with horses, although late in that decade we got an old Wallace tractor to grind grain. Unfortunately today our whole way of life is built around the automobile, but in another 70 years, if we don't vanish from the earth, we will adapt to other power sources; wind, solar, tidal, hydridian. We have always been adaptable, but our biggest problem today is the madman south of the border.

Great series, you folks. I have great sympathy with the diet......and trying to do it vegan is ......wild. Pretty near impossible in my book. But it's a start.... Not sure how many people could pull off the 100 mile diet. It's difficult. Cheers.

I wonder how many of you have noticed the ongoing reserarch into alternative fuel sources? Time- after- time I keep seeing reference to "OIL"....How many realise that OIL is on the virge of being replaced by other non-poluting energy sources? ( Hygrogen, wind, Organic gas production)...It is coming, never fear the only reason oil is used so widly is because it is ordained by the compalies that produce it...the world is slowly becomming aware that other forms of energy really do exist, and carry with them great benifit to humanity, and the planet we all share...look beyond the age of fossil fuel, it's just around the next corner!....You have only to look.

herbie: belgian chocolate eh?

freebear: energy costs in belgian chocolate?

herbie: belgian chocolate vs cadbury's?

don't read this if you like chocolate:

http://www.laborrights.org/press/chocolate021403.htm

there's your food efficiency for you. that's one capitalist race to the bottom that started at the bottom and never left the gate.

i'm loving this series, keep it up. its not an experiment, its a prediction of the future. people everywhere are going to go through exactly these kinds of struggles, except it wont be willingly because all the other options will dry up along with the oil wells. im glad to hear that there are still at least some options remaining locally. someone should be keeping track of the knowledge that got humanity to this point, while the rest of us go on having our big oil burning party like theres no tomorrow. this hang over is going to S U C K!!

Lots of political threads here - invigorating discussion - I'd say the experiment is already successful!

Absolutley in love with this series.

I haven't seen:

eatlocal.org

mentioned in the threads yet - but most of you probably already know about it, right?

A book released in 2000 authored by Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis, two British Columbian registered dieticians, shows that vegans who eat a varied diet (veggies, fruits, and grains) and who limit their intake of low-nutrient “fillers” like potato chips, candy, and sweets, have no trouble meeting the Recommended Daily Amount (RDA) of protein. Considering adults only need between 10-15% of their diets to be made up of protein a day, vegans who eat no protein rich foods (like beans or lentils, (including soy products) or nuts) will still have more than enough protein. Yes, eating a concentrated protein source makes it easier to reach this target, but it is not necessary.

So, in response to this article, the authors clearly did not do research into the RDA’s. If they had, they would have discovered that ALL vegetables have protein. And some research would have revealed many, many more local foods than, “potatoes….and more potatoes.” Squash, onions, garlic, and other roots like carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, and rutabagas, along with greenhouse peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers are all available locally during the winter. Kale and cabbage are also available, though in more limited amounts, along with apples and pears. In addition, although not necessarily the issue here, there is beet sugar available grown BC. This is in addition to the wheat they mention (along with other grains and even legumes that are surely grown in the area).

I do not dispute the living in Whitehorse (to use their example) would mean something entirely different. I do not think one could be a “100 mile vegan” in the far north. But, in the temperate Pacific Northwest, there is no reason one could not, if commited to the principles of environmental sustainability and compassion and respect for animals AND their right to be viewed as more than flesh, milk or egg machines, do the “100 mile diet” as a vegan.