by Steven McFadden
People often talk about IQ, the Intelligence Quotient, and certainly that can be important. But what about your LFQ, your Local Food Quotient? With all the changes taking place in the world, especially in the critical farm and food scene, that can be important as well.

As I define it for this non-scientific quiz, your LFQ is an informal indicator of how aware you are of the bountiful benefits of buying and eating locally grown fresh food. It also yields a glimpse of how engaged you are in supporting local growers and fresh food for your own health, for your family’s health, and for the health of your community and your natural environment.

To calculate your LFQ, answer these yes or no questions. Give yourself three carrots for every yes answer, and one empty basket for every no answer. Then forget about the empty baskets. Add up your carrots, and see where you fit on the LFQ scoreboard.

• Have you ever grown any of your own food?
• Do you know what a food desert is?
• Do you have a neighbor you talk with who has a vegetable garden?
• Have you ever picked wild berries, or any other wild food?
• Have you ever enjoyed an outing to a u-pick berry farm?
• Have you ever eaten eggs laid by a hen that you have personally seen (or heard cluck)?
• Have you ever said hello to a local farmer and shaken his or her hand?
• Have you ever picked vegetables in a garden or field?
• Do you know where most of your food comes from?
• Does the supermarket you shop at stock any food from local growers or producers?
• Do you think they would if you asked them?
• Have you ever enjoyed a tomato from a grower in the county where you live?
• Have you ever enjoyed an apple pie made with apples grown in your county or state?
• Do you know about any local farmers growing food for the community where you live?
• Do you have a plan to grow more food, or purchase more local food, in 2020?

FIGURE IT OUT
Perfect score:  45 carrots
Your score:       ?

SCOREBOARD RANKINGS
0              carrots             Missing Out
3 to 12     carrots             Nibbler
12 to 24   carrots             Muncher
24-36      carrots             Provider
36-45      carrots             Community Chow Champion

N.B. I originally created this quiz for, and in collaboration with, Buy Fresh Buy Local Nebraska. BFBLN decided to print a shorter, edited version in their 2020 annual guide, so I thought I’d roll this version out on my Deep Agroecology blog. – Steven McFadden