Local 
Most of us have gone to a Farmer’s Market or Saturday Market and have seen the fresh beautiful vegetables alongside numerous other homegrown, handmade delicious foods. It feels great to look through, sample and purchase these foods to take home and make a wonderful meal. It is an experience for sure. However, after this we make the choice to either go back to the market every week or continue to purchase food through a local grocery store chain. To most it is a choice of convenience really, but to our farmers and our economy it means so much more than that when we choose local.
If we can bring focus back to our own community, we can start to see that the food we eat has the ability to come from people and families rather than a faceless grocery store. We have the option to get to know the farmers that are cultivating and raising fresh whole food for us. Learning the transparency about their farming practices alone can make us feel like we are supporting a kinder and much more honest source for our food. I don’t remember the last time I was able to actually speak to someone at a grocery store about the farming practices behind the food I purchase. We can read a label but that is much different than talking to someone and getting the real story behind the product and the practices to get us that product.
Local farmers want to talk to us about their products, crops and herds to let us know how they are different from the factory and industrial farming practices that are hidden from the public. As we get to know them, we learn they have a passion and respect for the fruits, vegetables and animals being farmed. They become a neighbor in our community we learn to count on for wholesome nutrition. We simultaneously become healthier while supporting the livelihood of the actual farming neighbors in our community!
There are so many more benefits to our community as a whole!
- Shopping local farms creates a cycle of economic growth by keeping money in our own community.
- Preserves local culture where we can trust and count on a food source we know.
- Local farms contribute to our municipal tax base which means we can count on them as another business that funds local services for everyone that lives here.
- Fresher more nutritious food is available to everyone as we can receive it within days of harvest or slaughter. We have learned we can forgo the typical pre-frozen or rotting food being transported from undisclosed locations that have endured undisclosed harmful practices.
- Promotes healthy eating when we become part of the bigger picture of understanding and supporting our community. We choose health by choosing people.
- Jobs are created not only for farming on location but delivery, accounting, or restauranters that open to only use local ingredients.
- Lowers greenhouse gas emissions when minimal transportation is required to make food available to us.
- Eating seasonal foods allows us to benefit from a variety of foods and have a much more diverse diet.
- FOOD SECURITY! This might be one of my favorites of all. If we get to know our neighbors, ‘Farmer Joe’ and ‘Rancher Sue’, we don’t have to wonder who is going to refill the shelves at the grocery store. Our community IS the grocery store and we all know each other. We don’t have to feel scared, uncertain, dependent, etc. around complete strangers filling a basic human need, TO EAT. We can count on our community! We can count on each other.
A couple of resources we can use here in Idaho are https://idahopreferred.com and https://www.fareidaho.org. These will get you started on how to begin to support our local food community. We are all in this together and it’s OK for us to behave like that too. :-)
In Health-
The Micro-Managers
