Buying Local Food: The Smart Alternative
by Marika Alena McCauley
|
| Farmers are looking for innovative marketing ideas that will help them add value to their production. Consumers who choose locally produced food get fresh, healthy food and help preserve economically and environmentally sound agricultural practices. |
Do you know how far the blueberries on your cereal this morning traveled before they got to you? In the United States today, food travels an average of 1300 miles before it lands in the hands of the consumer. In addition, for each dollar you spend on blueberries, only a meager 10 percent of the money returns to the farmer. The remaining 90 percent of your money goes to pay for the food’s transportation, packaging, and marketing.
The alternative to this expensive and wasteful food distribution system can be found in your own community. Buying local food is an excellent way to bolster your local economy, support small farms that protect the environment, promote food security, while enjoying flavorful and healthy seasonal foods. Local food buying is a growing trend in the United States, as consumers realize the varied benefits of maintaining closer links to the food producers in their communities. Let’s examine the many reasons why local food buying is a more sustainable and economically-sound food system than conventional, industrial farming:
Buying Locally is Good for the Economy
Every dollar spent on locally grown food puts at least three dollars into the local economy. This contributes to the growth of strong small businesses, generates local jobs, raises property values, and leads to strong health care, education, and entertainment sectors. Research by the United States Department of Agriculture supports these findings, and indicates that farmers earn 37 percent more from sales at local farmers markets than they would if they sold to a wholesaler.
Buying Locally is Good for the Environment
Food produced and consumed locally uses less fossil fuel for transportation and requires less material for packaging compared to mainstream food production. Small farmers usually grow a diverse set of crops which are rotated regularly, while also raising livestock. This sustainable system of farming replenishes the soil, preserves the rural landscape, and ensures the farms’ viability for many years to come.
Buying Locally is Good for Your Pocketbook
It is clear that locally produced food doesn’t include the transportation, packaging, and marketing costs included in the price of supermarket foods. In addition to these savings, local farmers don’t use as much chemical fertilizer or pesticides on their crops, and they don’t have to work with intermediaries to get their product to the consumer. In an extensive study of farmers markets around the country, the United States Department of Agriculture found that food purchased at farmers’ markets is actually less expensive than food at supermarkets.
Buying Locally is Good for You and Your Community
Just-picked fruits and vegetables have far superior taste and flavor to those in supermarkets that were picked green and shipped to the shelf. Buying these quality products from a farmer you know also contributes to a sense of community, and helps make connections between food producers and consumers. The system also builds local food security, especially as farmers and local buyers give back to the community by gathering extra crops from harvested fields, donating produce to food banks or local shelters, and by spreading the word about healthy eating.
Oxfam America acknowledges these benefits of local food systems, and is taking steps to encourage the growth of this sector by supporting a number of innovative farmers groups selling food in communities across the country. There are a variety of ways that farmers make their products available to local consumers. The most familiar is the farmers’ market, in which groups of farmers work together to set up temporary markets to sell their products to community members. Farmers’ markets are growing steadily throughout the United States, and the United States Department of Agriculture reports that the number of markets nationwide has increased by over 40% since 1994.
Another popular method of local food sales is through programs called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Here’s how a CSA works: community members pay individuals or groups of farmers in advance for a seasons’ worth of fresh farm products. The consumer receives a variety of farm products each month, and benefits from extremely fresh, healthy and flavorful locally grown food. The CSA system decreases levels of waste and pollution, and also fosters close relationships between community members and farmers. This is yet another rapidly growing method of local food sales – there are over 500 CSAs in North America, and the number continues to grow at a rate of 12 percent per year.
For seven years, farmers' markets organized by two Oxfam partners, the Georgia Citizens' Coalition on Hunger (GCCH) and the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, have offered affordable, high-quality produce to residents of public housing projects in and around Atlanta. GCCH, a network of 50 organizations and 600 individuals committed to eliminating hunger, homelessness and poverty in Georgia, joined forces with the Federation to provide a reliable market for small-scale farmers and a way for poor families to access high-quality, affordable and nutritious food. From June through October, GCCH staff and volunteers organize weekly farmers' markets at six housing projects and at GCCH's Umoja Farmers' Market in its own building. The Federation recruits farmers from among its members who see marketing as one of their biggest obstacles. This highly successful venture brings economic benefits as well as opportunities for farmers and city-dwellers to learn about each other's worlds and build trusting relationships.
For more information
MRCC/Patchwork Family Farms http://www.patchworkfamilyfarms.org//?192,19(Oxfam Partner)
Red Tomatohttp://www.catalogueforphilanthropy.org/cfp/2001/red_tomato_494.htm (Oxfam Partner)
Rural Coalition/Supermarket Coophttp://www.supermarketcoop.com (Oxfam Partner)
USDA National Directory of Farmers' Marketshttp://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm
National Directory of Farmers' Marketshttp://www.localharvest.org