What’s the big deal about eating locally-produced food? Why not run down to Wal-Mart and buy a necatrine from Chile or a bottle of water from France? The reasons are many– even when it seems to cost more to buy some locally-produced food than industrially-produced food, it’s still a good idea.
- First and most important, local food tastes better. Food that’s been picked closest to ripeness, and that’s been refrigerated the least, tastes the best. Most foods are also higher in nutrients when they’re fresh. Plus, a small farmer is more likely to choose his or her varieties based on taste rather than uniformity or storage characteristics. If you’ve ever compared a home-grown tomato to a store-bought one, you know what I mean: no matter how red that store-bought tomato looks, it still has the consistency (and too often the taste) of cardboard.
- Local food is better for the environment. Small, local farmers are more likely to use sustainable farming methods. Organic farmers are required to. That means they’ll use fertilizers like manure and compost, rather than fertilizers made from natural gas. And they won’t poison the environment (or the food) with pesticides. To take one example, according to USDA, 84% of California’s broccoli crop gets treated with pesticides, and 48% with herbicides to control weeds. We at Jackrabbit Ranch aren’t organic farmers, but we do our best to stay away from chemicals. We use pesticides only when and where absolutely necessary, and then we use those derived from plant sources. We haven’t used any at all this year. And we never use herbicides on our crops.
- Eating local food helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Transportation is one of our nation’s biggest sources of greenhouse gases. And much of the food people eat comes from somewhere else. Some 82% of the nation’s broccoli acreage is located in California. How far does that have to travel to get to your home? And every pound of fruit air freighted up from Chile causes 4-1/2 pounds of CO2 emissions. That’s a lot of greenhouse gas! Compare it to 0.04 pounds of CO2 per pound of fruit trucked in from 450 miles away.
- Local food helps reduce taxes. In 2006, our government spent $13.4 billion of your money on farm subsidies, which went to 1.4 million of the estimated 2.1 million farms in the U.S. But half those subsidies went to just 6% of those farms (and about 3% of total farms)– the largest industrial farms in the country. The vast majority of American farmers who received subsidies (1.1 million) got an average of less than $2,300 per year. And nearly a million farmers received no subsidies at all.
- Local food is good for the local economy. The industrial food system brings a lot of money to communities– but drains it right back out again in supplies and food purchased from elsewhere. When you buy local food at a farmer’s market, you’re supporting a person in your community– not in California, or Mexico, or Chile. That’s a person in your community that doesn’t need welfare, or unemployment, or handouts from the Church. Sustainable.org says, “Annually, Americans consume more than $600 billion in food… with only about 7% of local food dollars staying in the community.” And they cite a study suggesting that for every 1% of our food budget that we shift to local food, farmers’ income increase 5%. That’s a pretty good return on investment!
If you like facts and numbers, I’ll expand on these issues in the coming weeks. If you don’t like facts and numbers, let your tastebuds be your guide: go to a local farmer and ask to taste his or her tomatoes. You’ll never be satisfied with a store-bought tomato again.
