Different people have differing reasons for eating local, as I’m quickly learning. One of the most clear expressions that I can identify with comes from Eighth of an Acre Bounty, who explained her reasons in this post. I’ll reproduce it here because it echos my feelings in many ways:
- By purchasing my food locally, I know where it comes from. I can research, and in many cases visit where my food is grown and give my monetary support to farmers who are being ecologically responsible in their farming practices and working towards a sustainable agricultural system.
- By purchasing my meat locally I can ensure that the animals that end up on my table didn’t live brief and miserable lives in feedlots or factory farms. That they weren’t pumped full of antibiotics to ward off the disease that festers in those situations. That they played in the dirt, were fed a variety of foods appropriate to their species and were raised in a manner that takes the surrounding environment into account, not creating cesspools of manure that contaminate rivers, streams and groundwater. (Mangochild says: even though I don’t eat meat, this is important to me as well)
- By supporting local farmers I know that the money I spend is going directly to support a family, not a ConAgra, Tyson, or Kraft CEO. It is going towards paying those working on family farms a living wage. It is going towards preserving an occupation and lifestyle that is given little recognition or respect, and is frequently the subject of derision. We live in a country that affords more respect to celebrities than the people who nourish us and make our isolated urbane lives possible.
- My local food dollars are going towards preserving open land ,and dollar by dollar, making it possible that suburban sprawl doesn’t swallow up every last available acre of surrounding land into a manicured green lawn for another mini-mansion or building block housing complex.
- By supporting local farmers I am much closer to paying the real price of food. I have a greater awareness and appreciation for what I purchase and think harder about wasting food. I can’t buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes for $3 from a local farm. But I also don’t let any of the potatoes I do buy go to mold and waste away. And I know that the true cost of cheap food is much much more, either in underpaid human labor, fuel costs in transportation, a scorched earth monoculture, caustic fertilizer and pesticide/herbicde use or the greenhouse gases released in bringing me peaches from Chile.
- By supporting local farmers I am contributing to this region’s food sovereignty. I’ve put my money toward ensuring that there is land left to grow crops near my town. I’ve made myself a little less subject to the whims of politics or nation-states when it comes to basic sustenance. If something were to happen, I know where my food comes from-and it is not the supermarket.
- Eating local food connects me to where I am, makes me more aware of the changing seasons around me, makes me notice the outside world a bit more. It makes me aware of local food traditions and cycles.
- And last, after all the politics, issues and moral dilemmas – eating local food tastes good! Absolutely fresh spinach, hot chiles, sweet salmon, cream top milk. The list goes on. Food that hasn’t been on a trip around the world before it lands on your table, is simply amazing in your mouth.
In this post, I talked about some of the articles that the mainstream media has picked up on local living and is bringing additional thoughts to the forefront, including economical, ecological, and community driven. It really is interesting what gets highlighted, and where the voices are coming from.
I also have started seeing a strong uptick in growing and eating locally – including growing one’s own food in a home garden – in the spring of 2009, perhaps as a combination of the “economic downturn” and the increased concerns about food safety after several scares and troubling information about inspection, pesticides, and general protection of the food as grown and distributed. Some thoughts here, as the spring sets off in full force.
