Steps for a Local Food Economy

Locally grown and harvested food. Year-round. Available. Affordable. Farmers making a living income. Farm workers eating well and living in decent housing. County policies supporting local food production All within the next 10 years.

Is this a desirable and realistic vision for Mendocino County? In 2006 and 2007 farmers, gardeners, and their allies got together to ask this question. The response was a resounding YES! The working groups concluded that recreating a viable local food economy will require goals and steps like those outlined above.

Why Grow Your Own Food?

Reflections by Linda MacElwee

Build soil, increase biodiversity and sequester carbon,
amazing flavor and tastes, birds, bees, flowers, fruits, vegetables, fungi,
bacteria, humus, compost, worms, butterflies, sunflowers, homegrown tomatoes,
birth, death, seasons, cycles, seeds, beans pushing up out of the ground, corn towering over head,
spiders, lizards, frogs, tools, sun, water, air, earth, sky, faith, trust, exercise, miracle, activity,
quiet meditation, contemplation, friends, laughter, healing, trees for shade, beneficial insects,
watermelons, squash, medicine, herbs, fiber, health, nutrition, joy, children, dance, share,
participate, play, touch the earth, witness, observe, creation, destruction, learn,
germinate, harvest, rest, dig, community, culture, stories, cooking,
eating, celebrate, abundance!

Supporting Local Food Why It Matters

1. Promote a Local Economy

Spent locally, our dollars recirculate in our communities. Buying directly from local farmers generates 44% more money for the local economy than purchasing food at supermarkets.

2. Help Farmers

On average, farmers receive only 16 cents of each dollar we spend on food. The rest goes to packaging, processing, transportation, and, most of all, advertising. By buying local, we assure that local and regional family farmers get full retail price for their food – which means farm families can afford to stay on the farm.

3. Eat Tastier & Healthier

Fresh produce loses nutrients quickly. In a week’s delay from harvest to dinner table, sugars turn to starches, plant cells shrink, and produce loses its vitality. Processed foods, sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and filled with hydrogenated oils, are linked to health problems like obesity and diabetes. Food grown in our community was probably picked within the few days. It is crisp, sweet and loaded with flavor and nutrition.

4. Know Who Does the Growing

By buying locally, we can develop a relationship with the people growing our food. When we value our food and the people who produce it, our quality of life as a community grows.

5. Reduce Climate Impact

Today the average food item travels roughly 1500 miles from farm to fork. Energy-intensive industrial agriculture, packaging, and long-distance food transportation produce roughly 20% of all climate-disrupting greenhouse gases. Buying locally reduces transportation costs and our dependence on foreign oil.

6. Stay Safety

Concern about food safety, E-coli outbreaks to dangerous pesticides residues, is another reason to buy organic and local food, which provides a safe alternative to industrially produced food.

7. Protect Food Security

If the county were to become isolated, food grown in the area would be crucial. We increase our security with a strong local food

8. Preserve Farm land and the Environment

As the value of locally produced meats, fruits and vegetables increases, selling farmland for development becomes less likely. A well-managed family farm is a place where the resources of fertile soil and clean water are valued. In addition, the patchwork of fields, hedgerows, ponds, and buildings is the perfect environment for many species of wildlife. When you buy locally grown food, you are helping to preserve our agricultural landscape and rural community.

9. The True Cost of Food

The price we pay at the supermarket checkout counter doesn’t reflect the true costs of industrial agriculture: pollution and public health damage resulting from massive toxic pesticide and fertilizer use, sweatshop conditions for farm workers, water pollution from agriculture runoff, and billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that mainly go to a handful of large corporations. When we buy from our local farmers and stores, we can feel good about what our dollars are supporting.

10. Why Buy at Locally Owned Stores?

Local farmers, dairies and businesses are more accountable and invested in our community than industrial farms and big box chain stores. Supporting our local stores keeps our money and resources in our community. Local store owners employ our neighbors and provide an invaluable service to us. If we don’t shop locally, the local stores will disappear. It’s our choice!

What You Can Do

You Can Create A Sustainable Local Food System

• Buy directly from local farmers, fish catchers, and foragers.

• Find your local farmers market.

• Eat what is in season.

• Eat at local restaurants that use local foods, ask them what is local on the menu.

• Shop at locally-owned markets. Request that they buy and highlight local

  products.

• If you shop at a supermarket, ask where their produce, meat and dairy

  products come from. Request that they buy and highlight local products.

• Buy wild-harvested seafood caught by local fish catchers.

• Throw a dinner party or potluck using foods grown in Mendocino County.

• Grow your own food, grow year-round, eat what is in your garden.

• Get involved in a localization group, the Grange or another organization that is working towards a stronger local food system.

• Encourage legislators at all levels to take leadership in developing policies

  that support small farmers and local food production.

• Teach children to care about where their food comes from. Talk with them

  about what is on the dinner table and where it has come from.

Most of all ... Meet your local farmers, ask to visit their farms, let them know you appreciate that they are farming.