Benefits of Buying Local Food
In today’s world where companies and shareholders are often driven purely by profits, buying locally grown food is as important as ever. The reasons for this are that buying locally grown food can generate significant benefits for your family, economy, community and the environment.
First, when you buy locally grown food, you get the satisfaction of knowing that every dollar you spend contributes towards your local economy and community. As a result, your dollars help your community to have better infrastructure - schools, hospitals, parks and more. Furthermore, buying locally grown food also supports the future of local farming, ensuring the supply of local food and provision of jobs in the community.
Second, buying locally grown food helps promotes biodiversity, as demand for different foods ensures diversity in the foods that are produced locally. If foods are bought from elsewhere, a handful of large companies could produce just one or two foods locally, resulting in large mono cropping. Furthermore, buying locally grown food can also support cultural diversity as some local farmers may grow varieties of “culturally diverse” foods.
Third, buying locally grown food gives you the chance to meet the growers and ask them questions about how the food was produced. Asking these questions enable you to determine if these foods were really produced in a sustainable way.
Finally, some foods can travel very long distances before getting to our plates. If you buy these foods, it is likely that the carbon emissions associated with transporting and refrigerating are significantly higher than locally grown food. Furthermore, because these foods can be harvested weeks before they are ripe, a lot of research shows that because locally grown food is harvested more recently, these foods are often fresher, tastier and have a higher nutritional value.
The next time you are out grocery shopping be sure to take a minute to see where the food is grown, and wherever possible buy local!