There are many reasons, but here are our top three.

You are what you eat

Because of the way it’s grown, processed and shipped, most Grocery Store Food is laced with pesticides, growth hormones, stuff that’s not even edible and the bad kind of bacteria, aka e.Coli. It’s no coincidence we have the highest rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and certain kinds of cancer in this country. What’s worse: Animals raised on factory farms live in filthy, horrifying conditions. They’re sick, drowning in their own shit and genetically manipulated to grow as fat as possible as fast as they can. Do you want to eat the byproduct of that scenario? Hope not. Local food is usually from small-scale and often organic farms. Veggies aren’t grown in a cocktail of chemical sprays and animals live and die more humanely, eating what nature intended them to eat. And if you ever are need of proof, you can take a day’s trip to the country and see for yourself.

You love the planet

Most of our Grocery Store food travels 1,500 miles before we can buy it. That’s a lot of unnecessary fuel consumption and air pollution. Local food = a much smaller carbon footprint. There’s plenty of milk, cheese, eggs, meat and veggies available right here in New England. Plus, massive food processing plants and factory farms dump loads of toxic stuff into the soil and our water supplies; they also generate lots of useless plastic packaging. And here’s a bonus: If you support local farms, you’re supporting the preservation of open land. Over the last 70 years, we lost 4 million farms because our agriculture was industrialized.[1] We’ve got a lot to make up for!

The economy

This is a complicated one, but it’s big. In America, we vote with our dollars. How you spend your money is important. Do you want to give it to a bunch of guys in monkey suits who run greedy, corporate food factories? Or would you rather support a farming family who works hard, just like you? Our big food companies already collect plenty of money each year in government subsidies (aka your tax dollars). More than $150 billion in the last 10 years was given to just a handful of giant farms.[2] That’s what makes it so cheap for us, but the low cost of Grocery Store Food doesn’t reflect the real cost of producing it and lots of things are sacrificed as a result: Safety, environmental stewardship and fair wages for employees, to name a few.

1.  Pirog, Rich. “Checking the Food Odometer: Comparing Food Miles for Local Versus Conventional Produce Sales in Iowa Institutions.” Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. July 2003.
2. Environmental Working Group. Farm Subsidy Database, “United States: Subsidy Summary.” EWG, (accessed October 3, 2006).