It is a weekend ritual for my boyfriend and I to spend our Saturday relaxing and taking a lazy stroll along the vegetable and fruit stands of our neighborhood farmers’ market. We always buy a gallon of fresh orange juice from the same merchant, and sip it while we peruse the ripest fruits, vegetables, and other local and organic goodies available that day. My boyfriend buys blueberries, bok choy, and eggplant; I always seek out ripe strawberries and wild mushrooms, and look for the friendly couple that sells chewy chocolate chip cookies and fresh berry pies. We buy lunch from one of the many prepared food vendors in the market, and relax for hours in the warm sun, enjoying our fresh local produce and home-cooked food.
Local food (read Reasons to buy Local Food) is in abundance here, and each weekend that I visit the farmers’ market, I renew my vow to support local farms and small businesses, instead of purchasing produce from big-name grocery stores. All I’ve ever heard or read indicates only positive effects from locally grown food: sustainability, better taste, a positive impact on the community, etc. But is there something that I don’t know? Could there be a negative aspect to buying locally? Local food may be good for my hometown and the local businesses in my area, but what does buying it mean for the rest of the world?
According to Wikipedia local food is defined by “a principle of sustainability relying on consumption of food products that are locally grown. It is part of the concept of local purchasing, a preference to buy locally produced goods and services.”
What are the specific boundaries of “local?” Many define “local” as the very small area including the city they live in and its surrounding areas, while others see “local” as any region in their entire state. This ambiguity brings up the question of whether food sold as “local” is really local. If produce is being transported across an entire state on its way to market, then it still has a negative impact on the environment, since traveling from one end of a state to the other can involve large distances, the transport adding to air pollution and fossil-fuel use. However, even if food is being transported across a state, the distance it crosses still tends to be less than that involved in transporting out-of-state food to big grocery stores. Therefore, on its way to market, food from within one’s own state costs the environment less overall than food brought from across the country or overseas.
