Did you know that at the turn of the 20th century, most food that people ate came from within 50 miles of where it was consumed? Compare that to the fact that for the typical modern American, food travels on average 1,500 miles from it’s origin to where it’s consumed. For our purposes, let’s define local as being no more than 100 miles from origin to point of consumption. Defining a local company, especially if considering non-food items, gets to be heavily nuanced. A company might be locally-owned, but sell imported items; a company might be locally-owned and processing an item locally but using inputs from farther away; a very local company will be owned locally, process locally and use locally obtained inputs.
Thinking about the food you buy and making small changes will affect much more than your dinner tonight. As we all move toward more sustainable food systems, it will be a natural result for us to improve other systems as well.
What follows are five simple considerations for food and the benefit of buying locally grown and processed foods:
1. Food Choices. Food is vital, right up there with clean water for life requirements. For many Americans, food traditions are whittled away to being something we practice at holidays. For most of us, the connections between food and season are gone. Food traditions tie us to our history and places. Food traditions evolved long before globalization and depended on what could be had locally. Nowadays, global corporations have put this out of balance. Unfortunately for many countries exporting food, the farmers are growing money crops and going broke as they wipe out ancient water reserves.
All over the world, exported foods are leaving communities hungry and devastating natural balance. Imported foods are less nutritious because they are not harvested at peak. Additionally, many foods are sprayed with chemicals to suspend the natural process of decay. Your food choices affect your health and the welfare of farmers thousands of miles away – and lessened demand for something, in proper markets, will result in less production of that item.
2. Buying local is not just about the money. There is a well-accepted belief that our current culture recognizes the market value of being local and supporting local. This is evident by the various big box stores that tout their local products and community involvement, no matter how many states or countries they’re in. Whether you believe it is altruism or marketing savvy, the fact is that less of the money you spend at non-local companies stays in your own community. It’s just a fact that when you buy from locally-owned businesses much more of your money stays in your community. This money will support the schools your kids go to, the roads you drive on and the fire department that protects property and life. The CEOs of local businesses are buying their meals in local restaurants, visiting local doctors and drinking from the same water systems you are. It’s much harder for companies to soil the environment where the leadership actually lives.
3. Know where your food comes from. When you are buying food grown by local farmers and food made by local vendors, you can bet your odds of getting food that’s contaminated by E. coli or listeria is practically zero. It can happen, but outbreaks would be so quickly isolated that the number of people affected would be minimal. By buying local foods, you keep farm workers employed close to home and these in turn become part of the economic community you live in.
4. Your dollars on high quality food now can result in lower health care costs later. Documentation of the poor nutritional value of industrialized foods and the long-term damage from consuming overly processed foods is growing at a phenomenal rate. The list of associated diseases from long-term consumption of manmade food substances is also growing at an astonishing rate. Many people don’t realize the bulk of the products on the supermarket shelves didn’t exist 50 years ago. (Stop there for a moment and think. However long you believe man has inhabited this earth, you’ll have to concede that man has been eating the whole time, and in the last 50 years we suddenly have thousands of food items that didn’t exist before?) The damage to water and earth from industrial food production can be off-set by buying from local farmers and food producers, especially those that use sustainable farming practices.
5. Shift 10 percent of the dollars you’re already spending to locally-owned companies. One study, focused on Northeast Ohio, found that by producing food locally, just 25 percent more of the food consumed would result in 27,000 new jobs, increase the regional output by $4.2 billion and increase tax revenues more than $125 million. That’s sustainable economics.
Maybe you don’t feel the need to save the world. Maybe you just want to support your local community. Either way, pick just one of these small ideas and you’ll be on your way to better living.
Lynn Krogseng is the factotum at Neighbors Market, located at 1707 Main Street in Vancouver. You can reach the market at 360.448.6120.
