Did you know that the food that you eat travels an average of more than 1,500 miles to reach your plate?
-shopping local matters-
It’s good to buy local grown food for many different reasons. Reducing your food miles, fresher taste and better nutrition when eating in season. By eating what’s in season locally we put less stress on the Earth. Like by growing food at an unnatural time or shipping foods from far away. Shopping at farmers’ markets and specialty local food shops all have fresh locally grown foods.
Buying local food at a farmers’ market or farm stand cuts that travel significantly. It also gives you an opportunity to get to know your local farmers as well as learn how your food was grown. Talk to the produce manager to help make choosing food that is locally produced easy throughout the year.
quality
Farmers’ market produce is usually fresher than the goods sold at supermarkets. This is because the food has been grown locally, and hasn’t spent days or weeks traveling across the country. The fresher fruits and vegetables are, the better they taste and the more nutrients they retain.
Sustainability
- Locally grown food doesn’t have to be shipped long distances, which reduces its carbon footprint – the amount of greenhouse gas produced in growing, harvesting, and transporting it.
information
Buying directly from the grower is the surest way to know where your food comes from and how it was produced. At a farmers’ market, the person behind the counter can answer all kinds of questions that a clerk at a supermarket can’t. For instance, they can explain which varieties of apples are better for cooking and which are better for eating, or tell you which breed of chicken produced the eggs you’re buying and how the hens were raised.
Atmosphere
Farmers’ markets are friendlier, more personal settings than big supermarkets. It’s much easier to strike up a conversation with a fellow shopper searching through a bin of melons at the farmers’ market than with a stranger pushing a cart past you at the grocery store.
- support -
Another way to support local farmers is through community-supported agriculture (CSA). Through a CSA, a farm sells shares of its crops for the year directly to consumers. If an entire CSA share is too much food for your family, you can split one with a neighbor and strengthen your community ties still more.
A final way to shop locally for your groceries is through a food co-op. A co-op is a grocery store that’s owned jointly by the people who shop there, so joining one gives you a say in what the store sells and how it’s run. Joining a co-op and attending its meetings is a way to meet and interact with your neighbors. And since most co-ops specialize in food that’s locally produced, including organic foods, it’s a way to support local growers.
Buying local increases community health
According to the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society, researchers who studied 3,060 counties and parishes in the U.S found that counties with a higher volume of local businesses actually had a lower rate of mortality, obesity, and diabetes. It’s simple: eating foods that are unadulterated with pesticides like organic fruits and vegetables, or free from hormone disrupting compounds like grass-fed meats, pasture-raised eggs and dairy.
2. Buying local promotes agriculture
Buying local, raw honey is a particularly powerful way to boost your personal health and support the bee population. Besides helping to knockout allergies, buying honey from a nearby beekeeper promotes agriculture.
3. Buying local promotes more local wealth
Buying local reaches beyond better health practices and actually promotes local wealth and jobs. This Chicago study found that for every $100 spent at a local business, $68 remained in the city compared to only $43 of each $100 at a chain retailer.
4. Buying local reduces the use of fossil fuels
Buying from local vendors means the product has less travel time from the farm to your table. All of the energy that is used to transport food via planes, trains, trucks, and ships contributes to global warming and unhealthy air quality. With the release of almost 250,000 tons of global warming gases attributed to the imports of food products.
5. Buying local utilizes less plastic
The rate of plastic being used at such a constant pace is circulating pandemonium beyond the endocrine disrupters lining our water bottles. In fact, a whopping 91% of plastic isn’t even recycled which explains why 8 million metric tons of it ends up in our oceans every year. Buying local goods actually reinforces the action of BYOB (bringing your own bag) to the farmer’s market.
6. Buying local means less risk for food contamination
Sadly, large industrial settings often breed risk to food borne illness. From E.coli outbreaks in bagged spinach, to salmonella contaminated almond butters, mass produced foods possess a greater threat to becoming tainted. Food from your local farmers market is fresher and usually safer.
7. Buying local creates connections to people and planet
Staying engaged with your local farms and businesses means a greater sense of community. Having a sense of connection with people creates lasting friendships and also holds such communities accountable for their actions. Getting to visit the farms that grow our foods and physically touch the land goes beyond physical health and nature connects us with the core of humanity.
8. Eating local means plentiful probiotic produce
Fruits and vegetables that were grown in their native, nutrient dense soils are rich in probiotics. Not only that, locally grown produce that has not been scrubbed off and sanitized still contains soil based organisms which support gut health and immune response. Purchasing a bunch of organically grown carrots at your local farmer’s market for your daily intake of “dirt”.
9. Create more LOCAL ownership and JOBS.
Small business are the largest employers Nationwide, providing the most jobs to local residents. Let’s encourage more start-up businesses.
TAKE ACTION
Attend a Mother Earth News Fair! Meet people who are doing it, speak with them after their workshops, introduce yourself. There is so much to do and see at one of these conferences that it can be hard to get it all in. They are well worth the trip!
Join clubs, associations, and guilds. Don’t just go to pass out business cards, but instead, be willing to learn, share, teach and keep an open mind. You will gather inspiration from others who share in your interests. These organizations often have larger shows or events open to the public that are well advertised. It might be a great opportunity to sell your goods to a large audience specifically drawn to your type of products.
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