Recent food recalls from Perdue Chicken, Urban Remedy and Chino Beef can really make you wonder about the safety of the food you are feeding your family. But what makes buying local, from a local farm, a better option? Here are 7 reasons why you should consider buying food locally. (And we don’t mean from the “local” grocery):
1. You can connect with the farm and farmer who grew or produced the product. Knowing your local food supply chain gives you the opportunity to question the methods and processes used to bring a product to the market. Does the farm align with your values? Are they growing animals and produce responsibly? What inputs do they use to produce a final product? Those are questions the farmer at the market can answer for you. Give the big industrial agriculture guys a call and try to get an answer to those questions.
2. Buying local is safer than buying from a grocery, big box or on-line. When you buy from a local farm, there are less steps the product must go through to reach your table. A typical pig raised in eastern North Carolina may be loaded on a truck or rail car, sent to Little Rock for processing, then shipped to a distributor in Dallas, put back on a truck to a warehouse in Salisbury before it arrives at a grocery store in the same county where the pig was grown. All along the way there are multiple chances for contamination. Compare that to the guy 20 minutes away who managed the entire process in your neighborhood.
3. Local farms are important to the environment. Just compare the area of land that a big box store is sitting on to the area of a farm. Farms are green spaces that promote carbon capture to be stored in the soil. Responsible, multi-species farms are green without odor or other obnoxious issues. Unless you consider the rooster crowing at dawn a nuisance.
4. Buying locally supports the local economy. When you buy from a local farm you are putting dollars back into the local economy and supporting a local business. That helps the business to grow and produce more goods and services for you and your family to enjoy.
5. Eating local food is eating seasonally. Even though we wish tomatoes were grown year round in North Carolina, the best time to eat them is when they can be purchased directly from a local grower. They are full of flavor and taste better than the ones available in the winter that have traveled thousands of miles and picked before they were ripe.
6. Local food has more nutrients. Local food has a shorter time between harvest and landing on your table. Eggs purchased in a grocery store for example, are typically at least 30 days old. Food that sits in a distribution center loses its nutritional value over time and distance traveled.
7. Local food has more flavor. First off, local farmers pick and harvest items at their peak of flavor. Items in the grocery must be picked before they are ripe, shipped (sometimes ripened with artificial means) then put on display for purchase. Secondly, many local farms grow varieties that can’t be bought in the grocery store which adds a lot of new flavors to your table.
To wrap up, please go out to your local farmer’s market, find a local farm and buy food locally where ever you are.
Come out and see us and a host of other local farms on Thursdays at the Oak Ridge NC Farmer’s Market, on Saturdays at the High Point Farmer’s Market or visit us at the farm.