Eating Local

This is the salsa I made today. I love salsa, especially the fresh crunchy stuff. I had so many chili peppers and tomatoes and cucumber and quinces and pomegranites that I decided to get chopping. I added basil and mint and garlic and a tad of vinegar. Everything except the vinegar came from a stone's throw from where I was standing. How satisfying! Still I'm not very happy with the idea of buying only stuff that grows within fifty miles of where one lives. There are minerals and trace elements lacking in localities all over the place. Seems to me selenium is absent from soil in the Pacific NW and people and animals can develop deficiencies.
I remember my Glasgow cousins with their teeth that looked as though they were made from brown paper due to fluoride free water and my aunties' goiters due to lack of iodine. Actually my real objection is that damn it I'm not going to drink chicory instead of coffee --- no not for no-one I ain't. I did that as a child. Drank Camp Coffee Chicory Essence. It looked like soy sauce. On the label there was a picture of a man who seemed to be wearing a kilt and a turban sitting under a palm tree sipping his chicory. I used to wonder who and where he was. I always put a shot of Camp in my milk. It tasted like chicory. Not coffee. Come to think of it I doubt chicory would grow around here either. Or wheat for that matter.
I worked with an American Indian once who could end any conversation on the woes of this earth by shouting in ringing tones POPULATION! Maybe Clinton should have said that instead of the economy stupid. Is there anyone out there with a substitute for growth and greed to keep us all happy?