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The 100-Mile Challenge began in the spring of 2005, when founders James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith decided to take the eat-local mantra to the next level. For one year, all of their food and drink had to be sourced within a 100-mile radius: quite a change from the 1500-mile average that most food today is estimated to travel. To engage more people and show how realistic (and satisfying) a goal it can be to eat locally, James and Alisa set out to host a similar experiment with the residents of a small Canadian town.
After searching all over British Columbia for a location to host the 100-mile challenge, they settled on the town of Mission, British Columbia, because of its strong sense of community and its mixed demographic base of 35,000 people that still manage to maintain a small-town feel. Mission, 70 km east of Vancouver, seemed the perfect example of the modern-day push and pull between agricultural land and residential sprawl. This struggle affects all aspects of life, including food choices--what people eat and where it comes from.
The 100-Mile Challenge starts in late spring at a community gardening kick-off party and throughout this inspiring, you'll-be-hooked series, will take you through the summer to a community harvest fair in the fall, when the challenge (officially) ends.
With superstore chain grocery stores in town like Safeway and Save-on-Foods, most residents don't make a point to restrict themselves to local foods, and perhaps don't know where most of what they eat comes from. But with the 100-mile challenge, they're about to find out. The aim is to engage as much of the community as is willing to participate, but the series will follow six lead characters or couples. Participants will learn more than anyone (except the town historians) knows about what foods the region used to grow, and they'll try to reach back to that history and revive old agricultural traditions to source foods that they have been used to getting from perhaps thousands of miles away.
Related Posts:
Take the Local Challenge - Eat Within a 100-Mile Radius
Could You Eat 100 Percent Local for a Week?
Save Money on Groceries with Free Local Fruit
Further Reading on Green Eating
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