Smarter Food Choices

As we near the peak of local fruit and vegetable harvests, it's a great time to revisit the benefits of buying and eating locally.  We must concede that America’s food growing and distribution system has brought us fresh produce of all kinds throughout the year.  Unfortunately, the very thing that we appreciate in the winter curses us in the summer.  We still see blueberries, strawberries, potatoes, apples and several other products from California, Idaho and Washington in our markets even when they are available from Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and New Jersey farms.

It's difficult to shut off that pipeline of far-away produce even when our local pipeline can meet our needs with fresher, better tasting and more nutritious food.  So don't be afraid to tell your market manager that you would appreciate that locally or regionally grown food.  Farmers' markets and buying direct from the grower themselves is very easy at this time of the year, too.  Beyond the other obvious downsides to shipping food across the continent, there are other concerns raised by an over-reliance on California produce especially. 

• Water – Drought and concerns over water is a persistent problem in many of the places our most popular fruits and vegetables are grown.  The driest parts of California depend on heavy water use for irrigation.  During the West's prolonged drought, agriculture, the biggest user of water in California, has found itself at the center of the water conservation debate.
• Pesticides – These massive farms generally use larger amounts of insecticides, fungicides and herbicides because a large monocultures of the same plant are more susceptible insects and disease.  While problems with pesticide poisoning have lessened ever so slightly since the most toxic chemicals were outlawed several decades ago, pesticide poisoning remains one of the most serious threats to farm workers.
• Child Labor – The Fair Labor Standards Act offers a number of exemptions to typical labor laws, some of the most notable for agricultural workers.  Among other special provisions for agriculture, the law allows twelve and thirteen year olds to "work outside of school hours in non-hazardous jobs on farms that also employ their parents."  Kids older than thirteen are permitted and often work in hazardous environments, without parental consent and during school hours.
• Profits – The large corporate food distribution system typically pays low rates to farm laborers or smaller farmers they buy from. Those at the top of the corporate food system and their stockholders demand large profits.  The cost of shipping the food long distances, processing into prepared food products and the energy for refrigeration and freezing gobbles up another large portion of our food dollar.  University of Michigan's Tracie McMillan explains in her book, The American Way of Eating, that the farmer gets 16 cents out of every food dollar and that farm workers get less than two percent.

It may not be perfect but these problems are much less common among locally or regionally produced food.  Pennsylvania never sees droughts of the magnitude experienced in California.  Smaller operations tend to use less pesticides and some practice organic farming.  Local and regional farmers keep all our food dollars close to home, while keeping a larger portion of the profits for themselves.

For more on locally produced food, checkout Who's Your Farmer in Blair County, PA? on Facebook.