Many people ask me why you should eat locally, as opposed to going to Wholefoods and buying organic. “Isn’t it the same difference?”, they ask. “No”, I reply. Here’s why…

When you buy local food, you’re helping develop roots in your community that go beyond a quaint trendy notion. Chances are, your local meal will help you eat a more biologically appropriate diet in harmony with the seasons. You’re contributing to a healthier you, which in turn contributes to a healthier community and family. Your dollar recirculates where it should. Rather than feeding into the questionable practices of corporate, industrialized food producers. Spending involves a choice about the kind of future we want to have, and it circulates the dollar locally, keeping our local economy and community relationships strong.

1.Local Foods Are Freshly Picked

• Supermarket produce is picked ahead of time in order for it to withstand the shipping and shelf life of being in the store. On average, by the time you buy your produce it is already 7 days old. When you purchase from a farmer’s market or have your produce delivered to you from a company like Hello Harvest, the produce is only 1-3 days old. The taste of fruits and vegetables picked at their peak results in an undeniably delicious taste!

2. Local Foods Taste Better

• Deprivation leads to greater appreciation. Fresh peaches in season taste best when you haven’t eaten any in 9 or 10 months–long enough for its taste to be a slightly blurred memory that is suddenly awakened with that first bite of the season. Eating locally means eating seasonally, with all the deprivation and resulting pleasure that accompanies it.

3. Local Foods Usually Have Less Environmental Impact

• Those thousands of miles some food is shipped? That leads to a big carbon footprint. Look for farmers who follow organic and sustainable growing practices and energy use to minimize your food’s environmental impact.

4. Local Foods Preserve Green Space & Farmland

• The environmental question of where your food comes from is bigger than its “carbon footprint.” By buying foods grown and raised closer to where you live, you help maintain farmland and green space in your area.

5. Local Foods Promote Food Safety

• The fewer steps there are between your food’s source and your table, the less chances there are of contamination. Also, when you know where your food comes from and who grows it, you know a lot more about that food. Many times farmers will give tours of their property to show you how they take care of the crops and farmland.

6. Local Foods Support Your Local Economy

• In King County, WA, for example, if residents shifted just 20% of their food dollars into local resources, incomes would increase annually by nearly half billion dollars. This means that when you buy direct from local farmers, your dollars stay within your community, and strengthen the local economy. More than 90¢ of every dollar you spend goes to the farmer, thus preserving farming as a livelihood and farmland.¹ This is important because as mergers in the food industry have increased, the portion of your food dollar paid to farmers has decreased. Vegetable farmers earn only 21¢ of your dollar; the other 79¢ goes to pay for marketing, distribution, and other costs.²

7. Local Foods Create Community

• Knowing where your food is from connects you to the people who raise and grow it. Instead of having a single relationship to a big supermarket, you develop smaller connections to more food sources, i.e. vendors at the farmers’ market, the local cheese shop, your favorite butcher, the co-op that sells local eggs, or a local café that roasts coffee. These people are so passionate about what they grow, and that means high quality, carefully crafted foods for you.

Your influence can be integral to the success of the local food scene. So do what you can, when you can.

There is no right way to do local foods, and the only wrong way is to buy none at all. I myself am not 100% local, as I buy coffee, tea, dark chocolate, coconut milk, and meats elsewhere. I have HelloHarvest deliver fresh, in-season vegetables, fruits, and eggs weekly to my work. I love HelloHarvest Bins! While I’m nourishing my body with locally grown organic produce, I know that I’m helping to preserve and increase the health of our communities, regional economies and planet. It also forces me to EAT MORE VEGETABLES because instead of dining out, I think, “I should eat all the veggies I have in my fridge before they go bad” and I have doubled my vegetable intake since signing up for HelloHarvest!

resources:

1. HelloHarvest – real food, to you
2. Local Harvest – find locally sourced food near you
3. Farmers Market – find a local farmers market near you

Sources:

¹ Like CSAs, farmers’ markets provide farmers with close to 100% of the food dollar (minus a fee or small percentage paid to the market for maintenance) and a direct connection between farmer and consumer.” In the words of the peach grower and writer David Mas Masumoto, farmers’ markets are ‘one of the saviors of the family farm. All those barriers created by the conventional marketing system are torn down. The consumer sees it isn’t just a commodity — it’s a peach, or a carrot, or a cabbage.’

Spector, Rebecca. “Fully Integrating Food Systems: Regaining Connections between Farmers and Consumers” Edited by Kimbrell, Andrew. (2002) Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. Foundation for Deep Ecology. P. 353

² In 1967, fruit farmers earned 31% of retail expenditures. In 1997, they earned only 18%. The fall for fresh vegetables is from 32% to 21%. These changes are accounted for by the increasing share of food expenditures spent on processing, marketing, and corporate profits, and most importantly by the concentration of power in food retailing which enables corporate buyers to drive down farm prices. [Elitzak 1997]