I love that when I took a step back and looked at why I care about local food so much, the answers came full circle! Of course, nature had her answer all wrapped up like that. And just for the record, no one knows exactly what ‘local food’ means… some say it is food grown ‘within 100 miles’ of the purchase, others say ‘in my state’.

Here’s a quick(ish) look into why I believe taking the extra effort to eat local pays off in dividends larger than we can measure.

Nothing beats sun ripened home grown tomatoes!

Local Food Tastes Better 

Fresh + local food just tastes better. Exhibit A> The Tomato. Homegrown varieties will leave you smiling as you savor the layers of flavor that drip off the sun warmed juices. The store bought, often packaged version of tomatoes  we get up North in winter are pale pink, mealy, styrofoam imposters. Don’t even get me started on eggs 😉

Nutritional Value

Food loses nutrients after it is harvested- up to 30% in three short days! Being able to pick a salad out of my garden or buy from a farmer that harvested earlier that day means more nutritional ‘bang’ for my buck or my work than buying food that was shipped across the country. Not to mention food flown/shipped here from another continent before it was ripe.

Lower Carbon Footprint

Next generation of Costas Farm Family helping you get your dose of daily veggies.

Local food (obviously) doesn’t travel as far- so it doesn’t have all those packaging + transportation costs that come with food traveling on average 1,500-4,000 miles, such as; gas, (trucks/trains/planes, drivers, health insurance, middle management, CAFO Operators…) There’s A LOT of info on the internet back and forth about this issue. You can make numbers say anything you want depending on what slice of the pie (strawberry thank you) you look at. I have to say that if people spend a Saturday morning buying a bunch of fresh veggies from local farms, or digging in their gardens, I have a hard time seeing that as a loss. (PS- buy produce in bulk when you go, bring reusable bags, or heck, just read more of my tips on shopping Farmers Market. )

Local Economy Boost

Small scale farmers put it all on the line each year, not knowing what the weather, banks or pests + critters will do. Go ahead, thank a farmer today! When the food you eat comes from closer to home, the money put into growing that food stays closer to home too.  The Shop Local movement is strong on many fronts and local food is leading the way! Restaurants are jumping on the local food bandwagon too. Some Twin Cities area restaurants are having wonderful results.  Also, there is a whole lifting of the community that happens when people truly support local that is hard to quantify, but easy to feel.

Lower Food Waste

Between keeping chickens +composting we throw away very little food.

From farm to table over 40% of the food grown in the US is wasted.  Just thrown away, in a land fill. Where the food will decompose in an anaerobic environment, releasing more carbon dioxide, worsening climate change. Unless you don’t believe in that sort of thing. Processing food, transporting food and ‘picture perfect’ grocery store demands all add to that high percentage of waste. But we each play a large role in that as well…

In 2018, more than 63 million tons of food waste was generated from residential, commercial, and institutional sectors, with 4.1 percent diverted from landfills and combustion facilities for composting.
-EPA website

When we spend more on locally grown food, whether apples, bacon, eggs or broccoli, we are more likely to make sure we use it or preserve it (freezers are awesome, people). We simply value local food more and if that helps decrease food waste I’d say that’s a pretty good place to start.

Building Better Soil

Thank you Farmer Josh! …of Turnip Rock Farm, his wife runs Cosmic Wheel Creamery on the farm as well.

I know you probably don’t think about the state of your local soil, but your small family farmers sure do. When they live on the land they farm, they tend to the land differently than corporate farms. The rise of organic farming and intensive rotational grazing is a sign that people are starting to taste the difference, and man is it delicious!

The first time I ever tasted real butter I was with my father’s family in Switzerland, eating butter that had been made from cows that ate from the alpine pastures just up the mountain… it was the most amazing butter EVER, and it was a major AH-HA moment for me!

Soil is the stuff that sustains life on this planet- along a million other parts of this beautiful ecological web. But is the soil is depleted and contaminated it won’t matter how much good water and sun beckon plants. Without fertile soil, plants won’t produce.

Skip the Herbicides + Pesticides + Fungicides

I like knowing what is in my food. Way back in 1987 the EPA considered 60% of all herbicides, 90 percent of all fungicides and 30 percent of all insecticides carcinogenic. The numbers waver after that, I wonder why. Big chemical companies (YES I’m talking to you MONSANTO & DUPONT, and all the other mega-agri companies listed HERE , are out to sell more product, not grow good food.  Children are also more susceptible to these toxins in their food as their bodies are still developing.  If you’ve ever cringed because you got that chemical taste in our mouth because you didn’t wash your conventionally grown (heavily sprayed) apple off well enough you know what I mean.

Late season harvest of kale was the sweetest yet!

Healthy Food = Healthy People

Which brings us back to how food tastes.  The better tasting the food, the more we eat. Foods like kale, Brussel sprouts and broccoli taste a million times (2nd grader approved math) better when fresh.  We all know we need to eat more fresh fruits and veggies. If we want to get the next generation moving in the right direction, offering them delicious food is a good place to start.

My oldest excited for his first bite of home grown celery 🙂

I want to get our next generation (my kids included) more connected to where their food comes from. Planting a seed and working with the earth to help it become food is not just a hipster trend- it is the way humans survive.

Local food- growing it and/or finding farmers who grow it is a passion of mine. And I’m still far from fully local (because bananas, olives, chocolate, Chipotle etc.). We’re all busy with daily life, and we’re all at different places on the food path. We also all choose our food at least three times a day (aren’t we lucky!). So if we all chose a few things to grow on our own, or buy local it would, over time swell to a sea change that would be felt over all the land. And really, I want this land to be here to feed my kids’ grandkids healthy food too.

But mostly, I just like digging in the dirt, eating good food and meeting farmers 😉

Just remember, Food Should Taste Good and if it doesn’t it’s time to ask ‘why not’?

I hope we can keep Digging In to local food, one meal at a time- together.

Michelle