September brings the month-long Eat Local Challenge, hosted by the Eat Local Challenge website and Locavores. The emphasis this year--the third year of the challenge--will be on preserving September produce for the winter, when eating locally can be an exercise in monotony.

Why eat locally? One reason is that food grown locally did not travel far to get to your plate, thus conserving energy and emitting fewer greenhouse gasses in transport than something grown across the continent or half a world away. Another is that buying locally-produced food supports your region's smaller farms. Helping these farmers stay in business contributes to building local food security and keeping lands open instead of built up.

Here are a few changes Eat Local encourages people to make during September, along with some additional links, ideas, and information.

• Commit to eating locally (however you choose or are able to define that, whether it be food from your backyard or produced within your state) for the entire month of September. Start small--for example, by replacing your fruit or vegetables with locally grown produce or coffee roasted in your region.
• If you have a blog, write about your experiences and challenges, tagging them with an "EatLocalChallenge" tag so the folks at Eat Local can link to you.
• Shop at your local farmers' market or subscribe to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. (For a guide to farmers' markets, farm stands, CSAs and restaurants that use ingredients from local producers in the US, go here. For a worldwide guide to open-air markets, including farmers' markets, go here.)
• Can, freeze, or dry your summer produce so you can enjoy it year-round.
• Ask your supermarket butcher or produce manager where their food comes from. Request locally grown produce, eggs, dairy, and meat. Do the same thing in restaurants you frequent, and get your friends to do the same.
• Read some of the guides explaining why you should care where your food comes from, such as this one from FoodRoutes, this one from the 100-Mile Diet, or this slightly different take from the International Society for Ecology and Culture.
• Grow some of your own food at home (even apartment-dwellers can grow herbs inside!) or in your community garden.
• Find out about your local foodshed (there’s also this neat tool— available, unfortunately, for the US and Canada only—here.)
• Modify your expectations. Not all food is available locally all year round; not all foods are available locally, period. Don’t like beets? Try winter squash, dark, leafy greens, potatoes, citrus fruits, apples, storage onions, winter berries, and other foods available from local producers during the winter. (And thaw the vegetables you froze over the summer.)
• Finally, be realistic. Olive oil probably isn’t going to be available locally for most people; same thing with bananas, baking products, and many other items people eat every day. Don’t beat yourself up over a few ingredients from outside your foodshed; the point is to make as much of an effort to eat as much local food, and be as conscious about your eating habits, as possible.