Printer-Friendly
Email this Story
Post a Comment (0)
Buying local is the next best thing to home grown
Local food seems to be growing in its importance to consumers as we see evidence of food moving through retail market channels like our own Culpeper Farmers Market. Here there are direct connections being made between local producers and local consumers. My daughter Caitlin, works for Whole Foods in North Carolina where she tells me this specialty grocery store figures that local is a multi-state area several hundred miles across. For purposes of this article, we can think about local food being from our community or from a neighboring community.
Why all the interest in local food? It seems the consumer sees local food as a chance to find something unique or fresh and that they develop a relationship with the producer at the point of sale. This personal and friendly connection may mean more than anything else to the consumer in pursuit of local food. You are also aware of the distance some food stuffs must travel to reach our store shelves and how this added freight eats up more energy. In some cases it may be more efficient to grow food locally but not in all cases.
In fact, we can probably grow and ship a 25-ton load of white potatoes from the ideal potato growing regions of the country, cheaper than we could grow similar potatoes here in our own community. The efficiencies of mechanized planting and harvest, the economies of specialized large scale production, make this important starch source readily available year round and affordable at our grocery stores.
Still there are plenty of gardeners interested in growing potatoes and their numbers increase during times of economic trouble. Claude Minnich at Clarke Hardware tells me he sold out of seed potatoes early in the spring, an example of this surge in home gardening. Potatoes are a traditional staple in most home gardens and it is no wonder he sold out so early.
So, why not buy your potatoes from the store instead of growing your own?
There is a certain pride among gardeners in growing their own and while this is not directly related to the local food discussion, it does reflect an influential factor that can drive the decisions of consumers. Buying local food could be the next best thing to growing your own for those who do not have a garden.
By now, most readers have seen the eye catching, colorful flyer that came in the mail recently, featuring the Buy Fresh, Buy Local (BFBL) campaign. It offers listings of foods from local sources here in the Northern Piedmont. These copyrighted marketing materials were proven by the Piedmont Environmental Council in the Albemarle area over the last couple of years and have been adapted to our area using their successful model and generous support. We hope this helps our regions producers and consumers find each other. In the flyer you can also see the names of other BFBL supporters, including Virginia Cooperative Extension.
Look for the BFBL kick off event coming up on Saturday May 24, 2008, at
9 a.m. at the Culpeper Farmers Market on the east end of Davis Street, where we hope to tell the story of the connection between local producers and local consumers who share in interest in local food.
You must be logged in to post a comment.