Our food is scary these days. The almost daily recalls on fresh produce and packaged products for a variety of illnesses and contaminations has us all a little shaken. Lettuce, avocados, jalapenos, salsa, eggs, rice, beef, fruitcicles and more! It can feel like your grocers’ produce department is out to get you. What to do? Shop local of course!
Shopping locally for food is one of the simplest and safest ways to strengthen both your household and your community. A visit to a farmers’ market, a neighborhood grocer, a local butcher, or a farm stand can put fresher food on the table while keeping more dollars circulating close to home. While there are few guarantees in life, local food is so much safer for many reasons.
The strongest safety advantage of buying direct from a known local farm or trusted local vendor is traceability. With a long supply chain, a bag of salad greens or a package of produce may pass through a grower, processor, packing facility, distributor, warehouse, retailer, and multiple transportation stages. That’s a lot of opportunities for contamination. If contamination occurs, investigators and companies must identify where it happened and which lots, locations, and customers may be affected. Local vendors know exactly where the food comes from. Your local farmers are a direct source of fresh produce. And they have something else big industrial farms and processors don’t have—trust. They know and care about you!
One important benefit is connection. When you buy food from a local producer or independent store, you can often ask direct questions: Where was this grown? When was it harvested? How should I store it? What is the best way to prepare it? That kind of conversation is difficult to get from a package on a national chain’s shelf. It can help shoppers discover unfamiliar produce, choose better cuts of meat, and waste less food at home.
Supporting local vendors helps preserve the places that make a community enjoyable: a Saturday market, a family-owned bakery, a specialty food shop, or a farm that welcomes visitors. Don’t fear your food, buy it locally!
