Top 5 Reasons To Buy Locally Grown Food

1. Exceptional Taste And Freshness.
   Local food is fresher and tastes better than food shipped long distances. Local farmers can offer varieties bred for taste and freshness rather than for shipping and long shelf life. When you buy produce from the supermarket, it has typically been picked at least 4 to 7 days before being placed on the shelf, and is transported an average of 1500 miles. When produce is imported from other countries, the time and distance are significantly longer.
2. Strengthen The Local Economy.
   Buying local food keeps your dollars in your community. Getting to know the farmers who grow your food builds relationships based on understanding and trust, the foundation of strong communities.
3. Support Endangered Family Farms.
   There's never been a more critical time to support your farming neighbors. With each local food purchase, you ensure that more of the money you spend on food goes to the farmer. Estimates say that farmers only receive between 10 to 18 cents of every dollar that you spend for retail produce. When you buy direct, you are helping to provide an opportunity for farming families to continue the work they love. Farming is a time-honored way of life. By buying locally, you help preserve this connection with nature, insight into weather, the seasons, and the miracle of raising food.
4. Safeguard Your Family's Health.
   Knowing where your food comes from and how it is grown enables you to choose safe food from farmers who avoid or reduce their use of chemicals, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, or genetically modified seed in their operations. Recent news stories, such as e-Coli outbreaks and genetically modified crops, highlight the importance of knowing what happens to your food before it reaches your table.
5. Protect The Environment.
   Local food doesn't have to travel as far. This reduces carbon dioxide emissions and packing materials. Buying local food also helps make farming more profitable and selling farmland for development less attractive. As our use of oil and energy continues to grow, prices soar. We need to rely on more energy-efficient agricultural methods, like buying locally-grown goods, whenever possible. There are also environmental costs involved with current consumption patterns. Large-scale “agribusiness” style agriculture can contribute to the pollution of our soils and water.

Learn more online

We recommend Eat Local Challenge, 100 Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Eat Local page. These sites offer lots of getting started info and tips for becoming a “localvore.”