What is ‘local’ for you?

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 7 December 2011 in meta | 8 comments

Yesterday on Not Dabbling In Normal, Xan wrote a post about ‘what is local?’. It’s actually something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while so I thought I’d ask you guys the same thing.

We know that it’s better to buy local food/resources and use local providers, because it means that our food, yarn or whatnot isn’t travelling halfway around the world to get to us and more money stays in our local economy rather than floating away to tax exiles overseas. But what is local to you?

Without thinking about it much, I guess I’d say local for me is things made, grown or raised in Yorkshire. It seems obvious: I live in Yorkshire and so stuff from Yorkshire is ‘local’ to me. But that’s a bit silly as there are lots of places in Lancashire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire that are nearer to me that the top reaches of North Yorkshire. I don’t think I’m the only one with that idea though – when we go to a farmers market, it’s mostly sellers from Yorkshire too. Presumably producers in Lincolnshire and Derbyshire have big cities to supply closer to home.

Perhaps a radius is a better option – according to Xan:

Joel Salation of Polyface Farm has a useful, practical definition of “local”– you can drive there and back in a day. This gives you about a 4-hour radius, or just under 300 miles.

I’m not denying that doesn’t make perfect sense for Joel and many other people but a 300 mile radius from me covers all of the UK, and the top of the Netherlands, Belgium, France and a whole lot of sea (the yellow circle on the map below). I’d put something from that 300 miles over something flown in from New Zealand or Kenya but it doesn’t feel terribly local really.

I’ve heard other people say, and particularly in British context, ‘local’ is about a 100mile radius (the green circle on the map for me). That seems closer to my idea of local and seems practical too. But if I lived on the coast in Norfolk, or up in the highlands of Scotland, a 100miles radius would include too much sea/mountainous moorland to result in a lot of produce.

I think what I’m surmising is that local means different to different people, depending on where they are – what does it mean to you?

What do you consider ‘local’? Assuming you’re unable to buy everything locally, what do you prioritise to buy locally or from local suppliers? Do you think you could survive (and enjoy it!) on just local supplies?

(Radii produced on the “Free Map Tools” website in case anyone wants to try making their own.)

(Photo by e pants)