Eat Local (as much as you can)
Oct 23
Many people ask me about ways to support local local food providers. My usual answer is, “You can’t be lazy. You might have to do a little homework.” With very few local grocery stores left standing in 2010, the big boys simply (and somewhat understandably) can’t be bothered with stocking their produce, meat, and dairy sections with truly local foods. Logistically it simply doesn’t make sense for their buyers (margins) and their trucking routes (logistics). The same is certainly true for locally produced goods like clothing or books by local authors. If it doesn’t fit the lowest-common-denominator’s needs (nationally), it’s not going to fit on the shelves. As a result, there are fewer and fewer “local” farms creating fewer and fewer types of produce to meet the very general demands…
I lived in Michigan for several years where you could grow just about anything (except citrus, of course…) and was always amazed by how many of the “farmers” tables were nothing but middle-man distributors getting rid of their remainders from national (and international) farms/distributors that they were unable to leave with their supermarket clients. Why would I buy asparagus from Peru or cherries from Mexico, when Michigan is one of the top producers in the US???
Rather than reinvent the wheel, I wanted to share with you an excellent page that outlines the critical differences between Local, Sustainable, and Global foods.
What Is Local? http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/eatlocal/
A typical carrot has to travel 1,838 miles to reach your dinner table.
How can you contribute to solve this problem? SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL FARMS! How, you ask? SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL GROCER! I am lucky enough to be living in an area that still has a couple local grocers who are devoted to carrying what have become termed “specialty foods”. It seems funny to me that things like carrots from a couple hours down the road, or grass fed beef from across the street are now considered a “specialty”, but that is certainly a better term in my book than “not available”.
Don’t even get me started on the quality and taste of local food compared to their imported cousins… ;^>
