Working the 100-Mile Diet from an Archipelago

Lots of times, the idea of a 100-mile diet is associated with the idea of "eating local."

A 100-mile diet is composed of foods produced (or gathered) within 100-miles of your home. Theoretically, by circumscribing the distance your food has to travel to you, you eliminate some energy costs, especially the costs for transportation. It's a neat idea. Read more about it in Alisha Smith's and James MacKinnon's book: The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating (Canadian title), or Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally (US title). (The book is not yet available at the Haines Borough Public Library; try Babbling Books before ordering from Amazon. Remember, "...a dollar spent locally generates twice as much income for the local economy." 10 Reasons to Eat Local Food.)

Like a lot of popular ideas originating down south, a 100-mile diet just doesn't work quite the same up here. Equating "local" with a 100 mile diameter circle, my house at its center, and thinking that that's going to reduce transportation costs is a little far fetched. Why? Because I live not only in rural Alaska, but on an archipelago, so most of my allotted 100 miles are roadless and under water. So I doubt eating a 100-mile diet with Haines, Alaska at the center will save transportation costs - especially if I want to eat food from the edges of the 100 mile circle.

But check it out. It's fun. Go to 100 Mile Diet, and plug in our zip code. Our circle takes in Glacier Bay, Juneau, Angoon, Hoonah, a corner of Kluane, but doesn't quite stretch to include Whitehorse. (I am talking about food that we can grow, not food that travels under its own power, like salmon, halibut, eulachon, herring, and moose.)

It would be nice (imperative, maybe?) to find a solution to these transportation costs. Maybe what we need is an "Alaska Regional Food Management Authority Act" fashioned after the Alaska Regional Solid Waste Management Authority Act (AS 29.35.800-925). Let's see, the State says that the purpose of a solid waste management authority is to "provide cost-effective management of solid waste, including transportation... ." Wouldn't it be neat if growers in the region could get together and bring their products cooperatively and inexpensively to market? We need some visionaries here.

Transportation is a barrier to eating locally, both regionally (from the edges inward of our 100-mile circle) and nearby. It hits closer to home than you might imagine. Consider the cost in time and fuel to bring the dozens and dozens of eggs produced at the upper end of the Chilkat Valley down to the retail stores in town. Some producers just don't make the trip because they can't afford to. We probably don't need a state authorized "authority" to manage this type of transportation problem in the valley, but we do need to organize - sooner than later. Here's an idea: as the Haines Farmers' and Crafters' Market gets going, maybe it can actuate an electronic bulletin board for Haines producers to contact travellers willing to bring produce to markets at one end of the valley or the other.