Why Local? Revised.

Like most people, Tamara and I first got involved with the local food movement as consumers.  In Boston I frequented the store at Allandale Farm and shopped for my household of four guys - for whom I handled the bulk of the cooking - at a co-op featuring a decent amount of locally-sourced goods.  Tamara's sister started an urban farm in West Philadelphia, and she spent some time working on farms as a kid, so the importance and benefits of eating local have been on her radar a bit longer than mine.  

When we moved to Saratoga over two years ago, we started shopping at the farmer's market and things started to come into focus for us.  We became CSA members, supporting the Kilpatrick Family Farm's year round efforts and soon I began working for them at market.  I also began baking pies using local ingredients for a cafe in the area.  We spent the next two years eating food grown primarily within our food-shed.  Eventually, both Tamara and I were working on some of the farms we relied on for our food - New Minglewood Farm and the Kilpatrick's respectively. Through these opportunities and commitment to what we view as a cause, if not a way of life (certainly not a fad), we experienced first hand how the local food movement brings farmers together with their community and how each benefit from the reconnection of this dying relationship. 

We owe the majority of the friends we made in Saratoga to our various commitments at the market.  Now that we are moving on to pursue our own agricultural dreams, we are hopeful to find a community in the Finger Lakes like the one we are leaving behind.  By working for local farms in various capacities and by shopping at the farmer's market our goal was to help shift the current food economy to one that is sustainable from an environmental, health and economic perspective.  Now we are attempting to contribute even more by starting our own farming venture.  While in its infancy we have a great deal of decisions to make - and even more work to do,  but we feel up to the challenges because we believe so strongly in furthering the development of Central New York's local food economy.

For far too many people food remains a mere commodity, available regardless of season and the environmental impact and nutritional depletion undergone in order to ensure its magical arrival in the produce aisle.  In Saratoga we were fortunate enough to have a farmer's market year round.  Now we have to drive a little ways but have options.  Ithaca and Cazenovia both have winter markets as does the CNY Regional Market in Syracuse. The availability of fresh and local foods offers a great opportunity on numerous fronts.  For one thing, the food is healthier.  While studies have disputed the health advantages of organic verses conventional produce, locally grown food is certainly more nutritious than its well-traveled counterparts. The nutritional content of our food is depleted with each minute that elapses between harvest and consumption. Being both grown and sold locally, the food is not being shipped from afar - so it is generally speaking, healthier for you.  
 

Shopping at the supermarket for vegetables from California, Mexico, or Chile, are not options for Tamara and I any longer.  Eating local - even in winter - is important to us for our own health, but also the environment's - this is were the organic/conventional debate is more clear.  Organically grown food is better for our environment, that is certain.  By purchasing from local farmers who use sustainable and organic growing practices we can further lessen the petroleum input.  More obvious is the fact that locally-sourced food does not require the use of exorbitant amounts of fuel for shipping and packaging. Beyond the environmental consequences, the amount of fuel needed to spray, package and ship our food puts us in position to make poor foreign policy decisions and consistently undermine our national security.

But the advantages go beyond the environmental and personal health.  When you shop at the farmer's market  you are keeping your money local, supporting your neighboring farmers, and building community relationships that have been increasingly endangered by fast food, department stores, and industrial agriculture.  You help to build stronger local economies, which can both create jobs and stimulate other local businesses.  Slow Money Alliance is a great resource to learn more about this benefit specifically.  

Perhaps the best thing - the most enjoyable anyways - is all the great food you will eat.  The diversity of produce at the farmer's market is often overlooked - although limited by season (a good thing considering  the fuel inputs and nutritional value) the variety of vegetables and meats for that matter are far superior to your average grocery store.  Most supermarkets don't carry foods like: celeriac, fiddleheads, green garlic, squash blossoms, romanesco cauliflower, snow leopard melons, or heirloom tomatoes and pumpkins- heirloom anything for that matter.  To eat frost sweetened kale and Brussels' sprouts in November, or storage sweetened beets and turnips in February is an unappreciated and certainly under-experienced joy.  

With the advent of industrial agriculture we lost literally thousands of varietals.  We are able to feed more people on less land, but at what cost?  And what are we eating?  In all likelihood a whole lot of chemically or mechanically separated derivatives of corn or soy.  Whole foods have become a mystery to people - in fact the very term is more likely to conjure thoughts of the supermarket chain than an actual 'whole food.' Instead of regionally diverse produce dictated by season, we are offered whatever crops grow most uniformily

It is important for me to at least state that this isn't a matter of some new-age pastoral idealism or something.  Tamara and I hope that by joining the growing ranks of new farmer's around the country we are in fact part of a pragmatic solution to at least some of the world's ills.  Internationally, we are draining aquifers, depleting and eroding soils, and genetically engineering seeds to feed an exponentially growing population.  The reality is that sustainable agriculture must nurture more people for the sake of the environment's and our own declining health.   

Simply put, eating locally-grown foods is significantly more sustainable than eating food from Price Chopper, and yes even Wegman's.   But all parties need to come to the table to solve our problems. Buying in bulk, directly from the farmer is a great option.  Harvestation is an online market connecting Finger Lake area farmers with bulk buyers.  Tamara and I have tracked down bulk garlic and potatoes this past month using the simple search, order, and pick up resource.  It is a great tool connecting farmers with their community - and it will only get better as it becomes more widely utilized.  Clearly supermarkets must continue to play a large role in our acquisition of food.  Using our purchasing power to promote local products and our voices to encourage their sale is an important step as well.  

Up until now a good deal of the local food movement's progress to the consumers and the grassroots work of farmers and communities to make the availability of good food more pervasive.  The popularity of books like, Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.) by Barbara Kingsolver, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Food by Gary Paul Nabhan, Fruitless Fall by Rowan Jacobsen, Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods from the great folks who publish all the Edible magazines, and the success of movies like Food, Inc. have done a great deal of work to spread food consciousness.  

The reach and impact of these books, while fairly pervasive, is still limited demographically.  Not oft-quoted in agricultural circles, Bertolt Brecht famously said, "first comes fodder then comes morality."  Achieving food justice is not only a crucial step in addressing some of our other significant problems, it has to be the first step.  Community gardens and urban farms have done a good job addressing this in a lot of cities.  But, dramatically extending the availability of and access to nutritious, locally-sourced food is a labor-intensive task.  

 Achieving more dynamic local food economies, ones that provided equal access, will require more people farming, and farming specifically for consumption at the local level. It will also require dedicated consumers and well-informed policy decisions that incentivize small, diverse farms that use sustainable practices. It isn't the only solution, but it is certainly an integral part of any practical one.  By creating incentives on the policy level our legislatures can help strengthen the bedrock for a sustainable and healthy food economy.  It is only contentious because too many of our elected officials give priority to the corporations like Cargill and Monsanto that largely fund their campaigns instead of the constituents who rely on them to make the right decisions at the right times.  

By eating local we can begin to subvert the dangerous paradigm of industrial food in favor of a more sustainable food system.  A blog can't change the world -  but one person supporting local farms and encouraging the growth of backyard, roof-top and community gardens, imagining a venerable patchwork quilt of food production destined for local consumption, many small parts assembling a nurturing whole - that could inspire people to change the world.  Making this vision a reality, I believe, could be the enduring accomplishment of our generation. 

That's, "why local?"  And not too sanctimoniously presented I hope.