Why Buy Local?

Most produce in the U.S. is picked four to seven days before being placed on supermarket shelves and is shipped an average of 1500 miles before being sold. And this is only taking into account U.S. grown products! Those distances are substantially longer when we take into consideration produce imported from Mexico, Asia, Canada, South America, and other places.

We can only afford to do this now because of the artificially low energy prices that we currently enjoy, and by externalizing the environmental costs of such a wasteful food system. We do this also to the detriment of small farmers by subsidizing large scale, industrial agriculture with government handouts and artificially low food prices.

Cheap oil will not last forever, though. World oil production has already peaked, according to some estimates, and while demand for energy continues to grow, supply will soon start dwindling, sending the price of energy through the roof. We'll be forced then to reevaluate our food systems and place more emphasis on energy efficient agricultural methods, like smaller-scale organic agriculture, and on local production wherever possible.

Cheap energy and agricultural subsidies facilitate a type of agriculture that is destroying and polluting our soils and water, weakening our communities, and concentrating wealth and power into a few hands. It is also threatening the security of our food systems, as demonstrated by the continued e-Coli, GMO-contamination, and other health scares that are often seen nowadays on the news.

These large-scale, agribusiness-oriented food systems are bound to fail on the long term, sunk by their depletory and unsustainable methods, business-models, and dependencies. Why wait until we’re forced by circumstance to abandon our destructive patterns of consumption? Start now by buying local, sustainably grown food whenever possible.

(Content provided from Local Harvest)

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