Insights on 6 weeks of pledge pursuit   -late September 2020

-pledge was to purchase 60% of food items that were either local and or organic

-end result about 70% achieved not including garden grown produce

-insights -the ultimate goal of 90% local and organic is going to be very difficult to achieve until some things change

-processed food items are often not local and not organic and poorly labeled -no doubt due to corporate lobbying for their benefit and not ours

-source of ingredients and the labeling of this is very inadequate -you often cannot tell where something came from -packaged or processed in Canada is not enough

-how to get to 80%

-don' plan on processed food -ie crackers, soups, salad dressing, cookies, juice,ice cream, baked goods, a lot of bulk purchase items -no labelled, not local, not organic

-the local challenge for nuts is almost impossible to meet -I have never seen Ontario nuts for sale

-specialty items will be a challenge -non dairy, gluten free

-prepare to give up on conveniences -like prepared pizza crust

-find local meat sources -you never know where the stuff is from in the supermarket

Helping insights

-where you shop is NB -stone store, goodness me, organic section, farm gate and market all help with the local or organic goal

-you can pick out a lot of local produce at this time of year  in supermarkets-august and September -but to achieve a high organic /local goal stay out of supermarkets

-embrace home food preparation -baking muffins and making granola, canning and freezing fruit , soup etc

-food preservation for fresh fruit and vegetables will be NB to keep % up through the winter

-home food cultivation is very important and in winter can mean indoor cultivation such as sprouting

-look for small producers -big corporations are sketchy at best and evil at worst

-it would have been beneficial if there was a small food group that were actively interacting to help support each other during the pledge period  -maybe an ongoing local food pledge support  group is worth establishing -sourcing insight sharing, recipes, etc

-participating in this pledge group was very beneficial -I was motivated to keep records, look for local and organic more vigorously, reject items that did not meet my criteria

-it would be more difficult to do this with young kids in the household

-I will look to repeat this again with another pledge group in the future and maybe modify my goal according to the season