The nationwide group of authors who write for the Eat Local Challenge blog, along with many other Eat Local advocates around the country will be taking a unique challenge during one week in April: Can we eat local foods within the budget of an average American?
We invite you to participate in this challenge, dubbed the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge, either by taking up the challenge yourself, or by reading along on the Eat Local Challenge site at the end of this month.
As editor of the Eat Local Challenge site, the issue of budget and the cost of eating locally is the complaint that I have heard most often. So, beginning April 23, we are going to set out on a real-life experiment to see how much it actually costs to eat locally. I don't know what the results will be, but I am excited to find out.
What's the budget, you ask?
The Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out some very detailed statistics about how much Americans spend on different parts of their budget. Part of that, obviously, focuses on food. The most recent data that they have published is from 2005, so we are going to use those dollar amounts for our challenge.