It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that locally grown, produced or butchered food tastes better. I always love going to the local farmer’s markets to get ingredients. The main issue I have found though is it can sometimes be hit-and-miss as to finding everything you want. I think of of the biggest barriers to locally provided food is getting in the habit of finding and getting to the sources for everything we want to buy without making 20 trips across town to do so. While searching for local foods I came across many locations and places to buy local food that would really only take a little extra time to make work. I hear people saying that it’s too much hassle to make an extra trip just for a bag of corn or some fresh tomatoes. However, they don’t mind making 2-3 trips a week to the redbox to get a movie or return one they watched 6 days ago. So in the bigger picture, combining trips and simply planning ahead a little can make it worthwhile.
The other issue is changing behavior from choosing the easiest mass-seller and committing to doing what gets the best food, not the cheapest. While searching for local places to get local food I found someone offering a 30-day local food challenge that includes a great selection of local artisan and regularly produced food:
There are still plenty of spots open and you don’t have to buy the food, you can sign up for the challenge and source your own and the sponsor will send sourcing tips, recipe suggestions etc..
In addition to getting much better tasting food, there are other benefits to sourcing local food. I am in Utah and the local Utah ag. site indicates: “When Utah consumers purchase locally produced or grown products it builds our Utah economy since a dollar spent on a Utah product creates the effect of adding $4.00 to $6.00 to our Utah economy. In addition, when Utah consumers purchase locally produced products it enhances our Utah environment by protecting our watershed and reducing the carbon footprint of those products.”.
In addition, these are also great reasons to buy locally:
- Locally grown food tastes better. Duh
- Produce loses nutrients after it is harvested. The longer it takes to truck over to the store, the less of its original nutrition remains.
- You can teach your kids life-long health skills. Teaching your kids how to choose and cook fresh food will help them appreciate better food over processed food.
- Local food is GMO-free. Ya ya ya I know, almost all the veggies we grow now are technically genetically modified from their original strains but you know what I mean.
- Purchasing direct from farms preserves the farm family and gets farmers the most for their crops. This also helps the value of their land so they can afford to remain farming and not have to sell out for development when they hit a financial downturn. A farmer will value his land and make sure it is fertile with crop rotation and appropriate use of chemicals.
Once the 30-day food challenge gets rolling I’ll feature uses, recipes and local Utah vendors here, stay tuned!
