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- Fresh, high quality vegetables and fruit. Local food is usually sold to
the consumer within hours of being picked. In contrast the average
vegetable in the grocery store is 5-7 days old, sometimes as much as two
weeks old, before the consumer buys it.
- More nutritious than what you can get at a grocery store. Why? Because
the average fruit or vegetable at a chain grocery store has traveled more
than 1500 miles to get there.
- Better taste. Food for grocery stores is grown with ease of harvesting
and long shelf-life (tough skinned) as the main criteria. In contrast, most
locally grown food is hand harvested when it is ripe for immediate sale to
the customer, with good taste as a prime criterion.
- Better local quality of life. Local economy strengthened by money
re-circulating in the community. Local farmers encouraged to continue
farming, so green spaces preserved.
- Encourages good eating habits. Consumers eat greater variety of foods,
in season when everything is at its best.
- Helps ecology. Farmers able to stay small and care for their land well
because they are selling direct to consumers. Produce travels less than 50
miles from farm to table instead of the average 1500 miles that the grocery
store structure causes.
- Helps stop world hunger. The present food structure encourages the best
land in the developing countries to be taken out of production of staple
crops for local consumption and converted to growing crops for export to
wealthy countries like the United States. This leads to small farmers being
forced off their land and that land being converted into large farms or
plantations that grow for the export market. Small farmers forced off their
land, and local people needing to buy back staple crops at high prices,
leads to increased world hunger. The way to help is to buy food produced
locally and stop supporting the system of developing countries growing
cheap food for wealthy countries.
- Connects consumers to their food source and connects the farmer to who
eats his/her crops. Bridges the urban/rural gap and puts everyone in touch
with the seasons.
- Builds community.
- Encourages sustainability. The cost of food in the supermarket is less
than half the true cost of producing that food because of government
subsidies to food transportation, processing and production. Farmers who
produce minimally processed food for local consumption are not usually
eligible for subsidies, but must compete with those who are.
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