Getting local foods to local tables: Part I, the problem

A typical weekly CSA distribution

While some dismiss local food as a luxury item for elitist foodies with too much money and time on their hands, the life-style experiment I’ve been calling “eat local and laugh’ has shown otherwise; local, seasonal food can be a cost-effective nutritional foundation. By combining local, seasonal sources with both traditional and new methods of food preservation and storage you can eat very (VERY) happily–and healthfully–throughout the year without relying on the food simulations that crowd supermarket shelves and drive rising levels of obesity and diabetes.

But if you really want to make local food work, it does take some planning, in part because efficient distribution systems for getting food from local farms into local kitchens do not yet exist; you have to cobble together your own distribution system. In fact, as bizarre as it may sound coming at the end of 2010’s first work week, now is the time to plan for the food you’ll be eating when 2011 rolls around.

‘Eat Local and Laugh’ … an ongoing Simu-nation series exploring psychologically sustainable approaches to eating, i.e., making food choices that contribute to building a good life by avoiding the simulated food crowding today’s marketplace … links to the ‘ELL’ series,

• It’s ‘Blog Action Day,’ time to ‘Eat Local and Laugh’

• Vote with your plate: On the politics of meat

• Getting local foods to local tables: Part I, the problem

• Getting local foods to local tables, Part II, options

• Getting local foods to local tables, Part III, a farmer’s perspective

In this 3-part post I’ll talk about how you can get food from local farms to your table, aka “shopping.” The second part will outline various options that currently exist: Farmers’ Markets, CSAs (for an excellent history of community supported agriculture), Buyers’ Clubs, At-the-Farm Markets, local retail, and bulk arrangements including split-and-share. The third and final part will be an extended conversation with Stephanie Turco who, along with her partner Paul Alward, own and operate Veritas Farms in New Paltz, NY.  During that conversation we talked about the various options for local food distribution from the perspective of a farmer trying to make a living feeding people.

But let me start by illustrating the problem: At a recent dinner party an apple-loving neighbor of mine was complaining to a local farmer how even though living in the Hudson Valley–one of the premier apple-growing regions of the world–all he can find for sale in town are apples imported from China, or maybe from the Pacific Northwest. He drives by orchards on his way into town. He even sees lots of apples on the trees. But because no one has yet developed a convenient system for connecting such a willing consumer with the available produce all that fruit goes to waste. In what I think of as a tragedy, there are literally tons of high-quality apples left to rot in orchards because government subsidies and current distribution systems make it cheaper to load up a container ship with produce from the other side of the planet than it is for a local store to source from a local provider.

As Turco said in our conversation about the problem people have in getting local foods to local tables:

So what are you going to do, go to the supermarket for stuff like laundry soap and napkins and then drive out to the chicken farm for eggs and maybe sausage and then drive to the orchard? That just asks too much of people, it really, really does. I feel that as long as our food remains isolated, available only at the farm it was grown, we’re only going to reach a certain segment of the people who want what we grow …. the whole thing is really a shame.

So, even if you have your chest freezer, vacuum-sealer, and cast-iron pots all ready to go for your 2011 meals, you still have to find and buy food grown near where you live. Actually, you have to find and buy reasonably-priced local food in large-enough quantities so that all your efforts, however much fun they may turn out to be, are fully worth your time and effort. I hope this 3-parter will help.

[Go on to Part 2]