Across much of the U.S., the agricultural growing season peaks in June and July, with a bountiful harvest time in September and October. During peak growing and harvest season, locavores, or people who only eat locally-grown and produced foods, can finally fatten up. The Locavore app (free) for iPhone and Android-based phone users, helps U.S., Canandian, and U.K. residents identify the fruits, vegetables, legumes, and nuts that are in season for their state or province. The app takes a visual approach, incorporating maps, pictures of foods, pie graphs, and charts, all with rich colors as vivid as those you'd find in a farmer's market.
While few people take the locavore challenge to the extreme and shun anything imported from more than 100 miles away, many people see the appeal in adding more seasonal and locally-sourced ingredients to their diet when they can. When your food is locally sourced, it spends less time traveling in a truck, which means less fuel is being used to transport it, and that the food can be harvested when it's ripe (ripe produce doesn't easily survive a cross-country or overseas journey from farm to supermarket, so it's usually picked and shipped underripe, resulting in less flavorful and possibly less nutritious food).
What's in Season?
Download and install the free app, then start by getting acquainted with the five-button navigation bar that runs across the bottom of the screen: In Season, I Ate Local, Markets, Browse, and About. The In Season button calls up a list of ingredients that are currently ripe and available to buy in your state based on your GPS location, and the approximate length of time they have left in the market. The foods are listed in order of how much time they have left, shortest to longest. In mid-June, when I loaded this screen for New York, strawberries were at the top (two weeks left) and potatoes were at the bottom, with 10.5 months left, being nearly available year-round. Below the list of what's available is another set of food that's coming in season soon: cauliflower, lettuce, raspberries, and so on. Tap any of these items, such as "peas," and the app launches an interactive map that points to both farms and markets that sell the locally grown item you want.
At the very bottom of the In Season screen is the option to pick a neighboring state to see what's in season there. This feature is a great option for people who live on the border of multiple states. For example, in the New York tri-state area, we rely heavily on agricultural products from New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.
The I Ate Local button is Locavore's attempt at providing social interaction. Users login via Facebook and share a short post about what they ate and where. The I Ate Local screen can show posts from people within 100 and 500 miles of your location, or from "the world," meaning everywhere. While this section of the app may be showing you posts from complete strangers, some of them may inspire you to cook something new or try an ingredient you've never tasted before.
Tap Markets to pull up a map that shows markets in your vicinity selling all kinds of seasonal and local food—not just the ingredient you need. In testing this piece of the app, I recognized most of the big "green markets" (a classification New York City uses for some kinds of farmer's markets), but none of the produce shops in the neighborhood where I live. It's possible these markets were left off because they do not exclusively sell local ingredients (bananas don't grow in the continental 48, my friends). However, I also saw a few outliers on the list, locations that appeared to be the headquarters or offices of some market group, but certainly not a shop.
The Browse button had my undivided attention when I first started to play with it, until some of its options turned up dry. You can browse fruits and vegetables, places, recipes currently in season, and recipes coming into season. Browsing is what it sounds like, a way to explore foods, markets, and recipes without the restrictions of looking at what's available and in season near you. But behind the two recipe butons, I found nothing at all. Until that part of the database is updated, Locavore should just remove those buttons. They tease users with hands-on and practical information about what to do with the food that they buy.
In the About tab, users can find resources that the developers used to information into the app. Users can also override the GPS location by entering their ZIP or post code here.
Short Shopping List
As locavores know, produce isn't the only seasonal or locally-produced food. Cheese, meats, and even beer and wine can also have specified times in the annual cycle when they are produced, aged, and ready for consumption. Locavore is off to a good start with fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, but it falls short right now on helping people stay informed about what it means to eat locally and seasonally. A full diet needs to consider these food and drink products, too.
Locavore for iPhone and Android might be able to guide people toward seasonal produce, but it's really missing its mission by not following through with recipes, and a more thorough appreciation for the seasonality of meats, cheese, and beverages. Locavore is heading in the right direction, but it still has a lot of work to do. I don't know of any other free app that takes on this challenge, so until one surfaces, use Locavore for information about fruits and vegetables, but bear in mind that there's more to the local story.
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