Buying Local Food

Buying locally grown goods makes good sense, and usually good cents. When you buy locally, you help your neighbors, small farmers who are being crowded out by mega-companies; you get fresher food and often better varieties of produce than you can find in the supermarkets. The small farmers who grow produce for road-side stands and farmers’ markets often grow varieties that differ from those grown by big, super farms. The mega farms grow things that provide quantity, in contrast to taste, and that transport easily. Small, local farmers can grow varieties that ripen in the field and bring better flavor to your table. Many consider this biodiversity important to the perpetuation of our agriculture. When you buy from a local grower, you invest in goodness today and promise for tomorrow.

Ripe produce does not ship well. Ripe berries squash in crates. Ripe fruit bruises easily. If you want ripened on the vine fruits and veggies, your only choice is to buy locally. The produce shipped to supermarts, travels well, but often has to be treated to look ripe. When you cut or bite into it, you find that it needed a few more days in the sun. At the produce stand, you get what you see. If it looks ripe, it will be ripe. In most cases, not only better produce but less expensive produce is available at the farmers’ markets and roadside stands. This is especially true if you buy organic.

Interest in local ingredients is increasing. In Great Britain, local food has become one of the big growth segments of Britain’s agriculture business. Interest in the US is on the rise too. Many restaurants across the county are turning to locally grown food to improve their menus. Last year, Sauce Magazinepublished a great article on local buying. In the article, the owner of Riddle’s Penultimate Café and Wine Bar talks about buying from local farmers to get the best ingredients for menu items. The Worldwatch Institute has also published an article about the rapid rise of interest in local ingredients. In the past half-decade, the number and size of Farmers’ Markets has mushroomed. Maybe it is time for you to try it out.

There is no reason to limit local purchases to fruit and vegetables. Dairy-especially artisan cheeses, baking and unmodified meat products are available and good choices for local buying. When I buy locally, I like to get to know the people involved. Suddenly, instead of buying my food from strangers with questionable motives, I get to buy food from someone with a first and last name. The more I’ve thought about this aspect of local buying, the more I think that buying food from strangers lacks wisdom; especially when we have a good idea that those “strangers” are factory workers, not farmers, butchers and cooks.

The Buy Local Challenge 2005 describes how to buy locally and offers this challenge for 2005: Use locally grown ingredients in one meal. You get to choose whether this rule applies every day or every week. The Challenge offers good guidelines and pointers. Meeting the challenge is a great way to begin a pattern of eating local. Of course they define local as within 250 miles. For me, this is a bit far. Most of our local ingredients are grown within 50 miles, but that’s the benefit of living in farm country; and a topic for another time.

copyright 2005 Chromia Poetics