Personal feasibility

• Stop eating and buying all processed food.
• Veto soda.
  
• No fast food (obviously) or slow fast food, like Fridays or Chili's (maybe not so obvious).
• Learn how to cook.
• Eat as seasonal and local as possible.
  
• Patronize local Farmers' Markets.
• Join a CSA.
• Patronize local co-ops, or join a buying club.
• Grow whatever you can; if tomatoes, peppers, or herbs in a patio pot is all you can do, that is enough.
• Buy a big freezer.
• Know that change is a process: it takes time.
  

Barbara Kingsolver made several great points in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: buy whatever you can locally and only what is in season; then create a system for food storage - freezing, drying, canning, root cellaring, etc. While we may not all be able to grow our own food to hold us over the winter, we all can buy it from local farmers: to eat both in and out of peak season. This is my plan for this coming winter. Whatever we can't grow ourselves, I want to buy from the area growers. It isn't limited to produce: buy a quarter of a cow, or a half a pig. Whatever! The options are limitless with a nice big freezer.

Whether you live urban, suburban, or rurally - there are options. In higher density populations, there are co-ops, buying clubs, and CSAs at close hand. In smaller towns and the country, more than likely there will be small farms at hand - and, I'm learning, buying clubs. It is a matter of changing your perspective in food consumption: from processed, boxed, and available year-round to local, seasonal, and strategic. There may or may not be a cost difference, depending on what you are eating. It is a long process, but once you make the switch you'll never go back.

Change is possible, but it starts with each individual who realizes our way of eating - though it may be all we know - is not normal, then going forward to change the way they eat and shop. My hunch is that the change will (and has) begun with the affluent: well-read people who can afford the time and energy it takes to begin pulling up roots and make the switch. Society-wide, I'm not sure if an over-all change is possible unless our lives are shaken up radically. However, that does not mean that we cannot change or that we should not change.

Please reference this post for my recommended reading.