Buy locally grown food! Good reasons abound and here are a few:

Exceptional taste and freshness! Taste the difference in fresh, local food and judge for yourself. A vine ripened tomato from your local farmer’s market tastes far better than one shipped from distant states and countries. Local farmers offer products grown for flavor and freshness rather than for shipping endurance and shelf life. Fruits and vegetables shipped long distances can spend as many as fourteen days in transit before they arrive in the supermarket.

Support your local economy and communities! Buying local food keeps your dollars circulating in your community by keeping jobs and money in the local area. Getting to know the farmers who grow your food builds relationships based on understanding and trust, the foundation needed for strong communities. Investing in a local food system means an investment towards healthy and sustainable communities.

Preserve the environment! Locally grown food travels short distances to market, thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and global climate change. There is a reduced need for excessive packaging materials and artificial preservatives and coloring. Family farms provide important habitat corridors and safe zones for a wide variety of plants and animals by upholding soil conservation techniques that protect the land from runoff and erosion. With 3 billion tons of topsoil lost every year, good soil stewardship is no longer “optional”—it’s time to preserve the important ecosystem services provided by our local farming community!

Help save the family farm! There's never been a more critical time to support your farming neighbors. Every time you buy locally, you ensure that more of your money spent on food goes directly back into your local farming community. A small percenage of the money spent on food is for locally produced food. Just think of the economic impact on our communities if 10% of our food was purchased from local farmers.