Ways to Support the Local Foods Movement

Reader Contribution by Crystal Stevens
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Eating locally is a vitally important way each of us can contribute to a more sustainable community and food shed. Based on the Permaculture Zone Principles, charted in a bull’s eye pattern, each circle represents sustainable ways to access food in our own communities. According to these principles, it is best to grow our own food in our own backyard first. What we can’t grow ourselves, we can acquire at local community gardens and small farms or by supporting local farmers markets. We can then support area businesses which are purveyors of local foods. Finally, only when we simply have utilized all of our local resources, then we visit the chain supermarket to complete our food needs. This mindset offers a creative insight into how our thoughts about food need to shift a little in order to truly be invested in the local foods movement.

To support local farmers means that you are actually helping a farmer and his family to survive. Perhaps you are helping to pay the operating costs of his farming operation; maybe you are helping their children go to college; perhaps your money is buying seeds. Whatever the case may be, knowing that you are supporting the livelihood of an honest hardworking entrepreneur is more satisfying and more human than lining the pockets of CEO’s of major corporations. The support of farmers first shows the dedication to immediate community. This act of supporting local is actually helping to strengthen the economy within a specific radius. Also, Young farm families are true stewards of the earth. They care about the soil, the air and the water.

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