Omaha By Design: Omaha, Only Better

Editor’s Note: This is the sixth in a continuing series of articles provided by the Green Omaha Coalition’s Green Neighborhood Council. The Green Omaha Coalition is dedicated to promoting a healthy, sustainable community through partnerships, policy and smart solutions. Omaha by Design is a founding partner. This month’s column was written by the Food Choices Committee of the Green Neighborhood Council – Trilety Wade, Kathy Townsend, Mary Green, Nancy Williams, Katja Koehler-Cole and Daniel Lawse.

Eat locally – but why? Ask seven Omaha foodies why it’s important to eat locally, and this is what you’ll learn.

Taste and Nutrition
Local produce harvested close to the sell date is fresher and more nutritious than national or global food because fewer in-transit days are required to bring the food to your table. Choosing locally means you eat kale from Blair, Neb., not California.

Food Security
Growing and purchasing locally grown or raised produce and meat increases the local food supply, providing greater access to healthy food for families. For more information, visit www.foodsecurity.org or www.usda.gov and search “Community Food Systems.”

Resiliency
Producing and consuming food within one region reduces dependence on external resources. A resilient community indicates a city’s ability to produce enough food locally to help prevent a crippled economy in the face of food or oil shortages.

Economics
Purchasing food and meat from local farmers and ranchers who direct funds back into the community builds a sustainable economy. When you pay a local grower or rancher, you are paying for the production of your food – not for packaging, long-term storage or long-distance transportation. When food is in-season and plentiful, it’s usually inexpensive, too!

Biodiversity
Liberating your food choices from a commercial market dominated by a few hybrid varieties means you have more decision-making power about what varieties of fruits, veggies and even meats you eat. A dwindling agricultural gene pool creates concern about the vulnerabilities of monotypic crops – think Irish potato famine and food security.

Lifestyle
Gardening creates connections – connections between people and nature, between consumers and producers, and between citizens and their community. Growing food can engender a sense of awe, and it’s fresh air exercise!

Peak Oil
Oil is a finite natural resource, and the world is running out of cheap, easily accessible oil. If your food was grown with commercial chemical inputs, harvested with oil-dependent equipment, transported long-distances via trucks and shipped or wrapped in petroleum-based packaging, then your food is oily! Growing and eating local food can reduce our oil dependence and mitigate the effects of “peak oil.”

Here’s how you can start eating locally.

Visit one of Omaha’s many farmers’ markets.
For markets in Nebraska, visit www.agr.state.ne.us/pub/apd/produce.htm or www.localharvest.org

• Omaha Farmers’ Market (downtown)
  11th & Jackson streets
  Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
  www.omahafarmersmarket.com

• Village Pointe Farmers’ Market
  168th & Dodge
  Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
  www.voterealfood.com

• Omaha Rockbrook Farmers’ Market
  10744 W. Center Road
  Weekdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

• Benson Farmers’ Market
  Military Avenue & Maple
  Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon

• Bancroft Street Farmers’ Market
  2702 S. 10th St.
  Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

• Cirian’s Farmer’s Market
  4911 Leavenworth St.
  402.551.1879

Join a food co-op.
Visit the Nebraska Food Co-operative at www.nebraskafood.org to find a variety of local meats, cheeses, eggs and baked goods.

Join or start a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) organization.
Visit www.csacenter.org or www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml. The Alternative Farm Systems Information Center defines a CSA as a “community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farm becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the grower and consumer providing mutual support and sharing the responsibilities and benefits of food production.”

Join a community garden.
Community gardening allows you to cultivate food on a nearby plot of land with other food-interested folks. You can learn and grow side-by-side with neighbors and friends. Omaha’s community gardens include City Sprouts at 40th & Franklin, the Gifford Park Community Garden at 35th & Cass Street, and 13 Big Garden sites throughout the city. To find out more about community gardening, visit www.communitygarden.org.

Be a local food advocate.
Talk to the managers at your local grocery store and restaurants, members of the school board, representatives of your city and your local corrections system. Explain why choosing locally produced and raised food and meat is important, and see how you or your organization can work with them to begin buying local.

Grow your own food.
Land doesn’t need to be set aside to produce crops. You can plant a kitchen garden or a square-foot garden. Better yet, become a permaculturist. Developed by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, permaculture – permanent culture and permanent agriculture – includes good practices from many disciplines and offers them as an integrated whole.

Don’t limit yourself.
Try locally “value added” foods like flour. Visit www.agr.state.ne.us and click the “Food & Meat Directory” link under “Brochures.”

Plan to attend this month’s Green Living Workshop.
The event, “Green Your Eating,” will be held Saturday, July 26, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Village Pointe Farmers’ Market. Learn what questions to ask your local growers, see a demonstration by chefs from the Metropolitan Community College Institute of Culinary Arts, be introduced to food storage and sign up for a chance to win prizes. R.S.V.P. to Trilety Wade at trilety@hotmail.com. The event, sponsored by the Green Neighborhood Council of the Green Omaha Coalition, is free and open to the public.