Local Food Directory for Richmond

Ben Hastil, a student at Earlham College, has created a directory of local food options in Richmond, Indiana [860KB PDF]. The directory lists businesses, organizations, farms, and people in the region that provide different kinds of food resources. Example categories include baked goods, dairy products, meats, vegetables, places with general farm activities, and so on.

Locally grown food is certainly critical to creating a strong, self-reliant community, as we've discussed before, and this is just one more great resource available to those interested in eating more locally. You can find other resources related to food and agriculture here at PWC as well.

Why a local food directory? In the introduction to his directory, Ben writes:

Lester R. Brown states, in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, that “in agriculture we often look at how climate affects the food supply but not at how what we eat affects climate. While we understand rather well the link between climate change and the fuel efficiency of the cars we buy, we do not have a comparable understanding of the climate effect of various dietary options.”1 Brown goes on to note, however, that Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martin of the University of Chicago have begun to study these issues. In their recent article, “Diet, Energy, and Global Warming,” they reported that “the energy used in the food economy to provide the typical American diet and that used for personal transportation are roughly the same”2 and that switching to a local, more heavily plant-based diet is as significant as switching from driving a highly-polluting SUV to an efficient gas-electric hybrid car. Eshel and Marin conclude in their report that the choice to eat local produce is thus “far from trivial, [as] nationally this difference amounts to over 6% of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.”

In light of this, as the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice points out in their Fair Trade and Local Food Directory, what is “challenging and essential for us today is building sustainable alternatives [to our current food system] in our own communities. While these grassroots initiatives are often thriving all around us, they seldom make the headlines. We need to recognize and support them if we are to find that another world is possible in our lifetimes.”

It is my hope that, by providing information on the local and alterative food resources all around us, this local food directory for Richmond, Indiana will help to provide the necessary tools to start building this other possible world.

Congratulations and thanks go to Ben for assembling this great resource. If you have suggestions or refinements, you can e-mail Ben directly. ProgressiveWayneCounty.org is hosting a copy of the file as a public service.