1) It supports your local economy. That means it creates income and jobs for the people in your home town.
2) Taste. Those tomatoes that were picked green in California and trucked here to turn red and then get eaten... you've had a home grown tomato, right? The difference is vast. Local food can be picked ripe (even if you don't grow it yourself), can be carefully cultivated heirloom varieties and not industrialized strains grown for herbicide resistance (yeah.. they breed vegetables that will resist the chemicals that they spray to kill the weeds growing alongside them) and not for taste.
3) Environment. Buying something grown locally is actually better for the environment than buying something organic that was trucked from California, when you take into account the fossil fuels burned in the production of industrial-grown produce, and then having them trucked across the country to your local grocery store. We're consuming about 400 gallons of oil per year per citizen, 17% of national use, for agriculture, which isn't far behind our vehicular use. Each food item on your plate has traveled 1500 miles, on average. If every US Citizen ate just one meal per week composed fo locally, organically raised meats and produce, we could reduce national oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. If that's not food for thought, I don't know what is. [Statistics reproduced from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver]
4) Small farming and artisanal food production are a dying art I, personally want to support. Government policy isn't always friendly toward the small farmer (I think a lot of my small farming friends would call that an understatement). So, vote with your dollar and buy from them, not CAFOs.
The above-mentioned Barbara Kingsolver book is an eye opener (for me, a life changer) I highly recommend. I intend to revisit this issue often on this blog. If you can grow it yourself, do so. If you can't, locate a small farmer's market - many communities run one and my hometown of Sparta does in the summer. Barring that, make it known to your favorite grocer that local foods are important to you, and recommend that they support local small growers. There are also food co-ops in many areas of the US where you can get locally grown often organic foods. Whole Foods Market carries locally grown produce where available. The more the demand is for locally grown food, the more large chains will bring it to you.
2) Taste. Those tomatoes that were picked green in California and trucked here to turn red and then get eaten... you've had a home grown tomato, right? The difference is vast. Local food can be picked ripe (even if you don't grow it yourself), can be carefully cultivated heirloom varieties and not industrialized strains grown for herbicide resistance (yeah.. they breed vegetables that will resist the chemicals that they spray to kill the weeds growing alongside them) and not for taste.
3) Environment. Buying something grown locally is actually better for the environment than buying something organic that was trucked from California, when you take into account the fossil fuels burned in the production of industrial-grown produce, and then having them trucked across the country to your local grocery store. We're consuming about 400 gallons of oil per year per citizen, 17% of national use, for agriculture, which isn't far behind our vehicular use. Each food item on your plate has traveled 1500 miles, on average. If every US Citizen ate just one meal per week composed fo locally, organically raised meats and produce, we could reduce national oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. If that's not food for thought, I don't know what is. [Statistics reproduced from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver]
4) Small farming and artisanal food production are a dying art I, personally want to support. Government policy isn't always friendly toward the small farmer (I think a lot of my small farming friends would call that an understatement). So, vote with your dollar and buy from them, not CAFOs.
The above-mentioned Barbara Kingsolver book is an eye opener (for me, a life changer) I highly recommend. I intend to revisit this issue often on this blog. If you can grow it yourself, do so. If you can't, locate a small farmer's market - many communities run one and my hometown of Sparta does in the summer. Barring that, make it known to your favorite grocer that local foods are important to you, and recommend that they support local small growers. There are also food co-ops in many areas of the US where you can get locally grown often organic foods. Whole Foods Market carries locally grown produce where available. The more the demand is for locally grown food, the more large chains will bring it to you.
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