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Foodshed

By , About.com Guide

Definition:

A foodshed is everything between where a food is produced and where a food is consumed -- the land it grows on, the routes it travels, the markets it goes through, the tables it ends up gracing.

First used in the early 20th century to describe the global flow of food, "foodshed" has recently been resurrected to discuss local food systems and efforts to create more sustainable ways of producing and consuming food.

A local or regional "foodshed" could be defined in a variety of ways -- a simple 100-mile radius, for example, is often used in "eat local" campaigns. Workable, sustainable foodshed mappings tend to take into account time and ease of travel, density of population, and productivity of land.

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