Why is locally grown food better for the environment

This relationship is lacking in supermarkets. Organic means working with nature, not against it. It means higher levels of animal welfare, lower levels of pesticides, no manufactured herbicides or artificial fertilisers and more environmentally sustainable land management — this means more wildlife!

However, small, local farms are not always able afford to become certified organic, despite using organic methods. Therefore it is always good to ask the producer next time you pass a farmers market.

This is an annual list of the produce known to have the highest pesticide load, and choose organic for these items. This year strawberries, apples, nectarines, peaches, celery, grapes, cherries, spinach, tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers top the charts. She is passionate about spreading the concept of healthy eating far and wide, both in a personal capacity and in her marketing and events role with CNM.

Follow them out on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram. Tags: Environment , Local food , organic food , Quality food. Why we should embrace eating locally Home » Blog » Why we should embrace eating locally. Making the choice to eat local produce may not always be the most convenient, but here are six reasons why eating local is worth it in the long run: 1. When buying locally, you may choose to buy food that was grown as locally as possible.

Locally grown food can be produce like fruits and vegetables, or dairy products and eggs, or even locally raised meats. Other local food producers can grow certain types of foods year round within greenhouses or orchards. This will often depend on your local climate and your community. Other popular foods to purchase locally include dairy products, like milk and cheese from cows or goats.

Even specialty foods like honey, nut butters or canned foods can often be purchased from local producers. As concerns grow over the sustainability of meat production, many families are choosing to purchase their meats from local producers. The more steps between you and your food supply, the greater the risk of food contamination. Buying directly from local producers reduces the risk of eating unsafe food.

Choosing to purchase locally grown food is an important way to support your local economy, contribute to your community, improve your health and do your part to protect the environment. Getting involved in the local food system helps us to gain back the separation we created between humans and food production. Not to mention, locally-grown foods get moved on a smaller scale than big corporations: that means less hands. In that case, the money you spend usually goes directly to the people growing it, rather than tons of different moving parents splitting a percentage.

If you want to learn more about how your money breaks down when supporting local businesses, do some research on the local economic impact of some businesses. Does the producer you buy from pay their employees a fair wage? Do they use sustainable practices? Do they practice social justice? When you eat locally, you are eating foods that likely have a higher nutrient count. It makes sense, right?

Scaling up local food production requires infrastructure such as slaughterhouses, cold storage, processing facilities, mills, distribution, etc. Before World War II and the advent of the industrial food system, this infrastructure was largely localized, but today it no longer exists.

But scaling up will change that economic model and likely decrease profits for farmers. There has to be some optimum point where the farm size is economically viable without losing its environmental benefits, but no one yet knows where that point is.

She is involved with Feedback Farms , a temporary local farm on a reclaimed square-foot lot in Brooklyn, NY. The square-foot garden produces tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, cucumbers, eggplant, greens, carrots, beets, radish and kale, and sells 80 percent of its produce locally to restaurants, grocery stores and at their onsite market—all within 4 to 5 blocks and via deliveries on foot. They eat the rest themselves. Because the soil is contaminated with heavy metals, the farm had to import soil from the Hudson Valley, and plants in raised beds and moveable containers.

Feedback Farms offers environmental benefits such as providing habitat for insects pollinators , absorbing stormwater runoff, and cycling nutrients through composting. But Sullivan feels its biggest benefits are social—providing an educational experience for the community whose members can participate directly in vegetable production, composting and rainwater harvesting. Small and local farms may use pesticides, plow extensively and irrigate inefficiently.

Some may grow in greenhouses heated with fossil fuels. Large farms growing crops suited to their region may use less energy per product and grow more food on less land. And adopting strategies such as no-till, more efficient irrigation, integrated pest management, judicious fertilizer use, better handling of manure and leaving fields fallow could help offset the greenhouse gas emissions of large farms. The inputs into the food production life cycle also vary according to variety of fertilizer used, amount of pesticides and herbicides applied, type of farm machinery, mode of transportation, load sizes, fuel type, trip frequency, storage facilities, food prep, waste, etc.

To make sense of the multitude of variables, the Tropical Agriculture Program and a group of international scientists have launched Vital Signs. Vital Signs is establishing a system for monitoring multiple dimensions of agricultural landscapes simultaneously. Monitoring a minimum set of social, environmental and economic indicators over time will enable farmers, scientists, policy makers and organizations to compare agricultural systems for sustainability and provide tools to evaluate the risks and tradeoffs of various aspects of agricultural systems.

Although it is being developed for sites in Africa, the data collection and analysis will be applicable to many different agricultural systems from organic and small farms to large-scale farms.