Think, Eat, Be Healthy

How Eating Locally Grown Food Could Save Our Food Supply

Sugar snap peas in the backyard garden.

Sugar snap peas in the backyard garden.

I feel very strongly that everyone should eat as much food as possible that is grown locally. By local, I mean at least within the same state or an adjoining state and preferably within twenty miles. There are many good reasons why this is important for all of us. This post will explore some of those reasons. I am writing this because most people don’t seem to think about where their food comes from other than “the store”.

papaya, fruit, tropical

Living in Florida allows growing more tropical fruits like these papayas on a tree in the yard,

Let’s start with a little history. Fifty to one hundred years ago almost all food was of local origin. If it could not be grown or raised within a few hundred miles of where you lived, you probably could not buy it at the local market. As railroads and auto roads improved and spread across the country, it became much easier and cheaper to transport food. Refrigeration made shipping food for long distances even more feasible. This was a great boon for variety, but foods from far away were still much more expensive than locally grown produce and meats.

banana, apple banana, small banana

These small apple bananas also grow well in Florida and are seldom seen in stores.

The industrialization of the farm went right along with transportation improvements. The size of farms started to increase to meet demand from distant markets. The number of varieties of crops decreased, with more profit from larger fields of more durable varieties. A farmer could make more money with less effort by planting 100 acres of tougher, less juicy and less ripe tomatoes than by planting ten 10-acres fields of ten different tomato varieties. This principle holds true for wheat, corn, melons and all other crops.

Buying at local farmers' markets or growing your own food gives access to many varieties of fruits and vegetables never seen in large chain grocery stores.

Buying at local farmers’ markets or growing your own food gives access to many varieties of fruits and vegetables never seen in large chain grocery stores.

There are serious problems with this scenario for health, flavor and long-tern sustainability:

*Different varieties of the same crop(for tomatoes-beefsteak, sweet 100, yellow pear, roma, oxheart, etc…) vary in their resistance to specific insect, mold and bacterial pests. A farm with 100 acres of only beefsteak tomatoes might lose an entire year’s harvest to a single pest while a neighboring farm with ten 10-acre fields of ten different tomato varieties might harvest 90% of its crop that same year, losing only ten acres of beefsteaks.

*Different varieties of any crop differ slightly in their demands on the soil and their nutritional values to a healthy diet. Growing a larger number of crop varieties ensures a greater overall harvest and greater overall dietary nutritional value as well as more variety of tastes and textures in our food.

*A large variety within any crop is insurance against the vagaries of weather. Even during extremely hot, dry, hot or cold years, some varieties will probably do well as other varieties of the same crop fail. This becomes more important as global warming begins to have more of an impact on the climate of our food producing areas.

*A demand for locally grown varieties of produce keeps the gene pool large for those crops. New varieties of crops such as wheat are always being developed to be resistant to the latest pest of weather pattern but it is also important to keep older heirloom varieties viable for developing future hybrids to deal with as yet unforeseen problems.

*Locally grown food is important because we cannot predict the future. If the weather starts a new long-term trend(dryer, wetter, hotter, cooler) or petroleum prices climb to new and unexpected highs, distant food will become very expensive while local food will become cheap by comparison. The option of available local food should always be preserved and the only viable way to do this is to vote with our wallets by buying it.

Each variety of lettuce, tomato or other vegetable or fruit has its own distinct flavor, nutritional profile and preferred growing conditions, making food crop variety an important issue for survival.

Each variety of lettuce, tomato or other vegetable or fruit has its own distinct flavor, nutritional profile and preferred growing conditions, making food crop variety an important issue for survival.

Another way to preserve locally grown food and variety in the food gene pool is to grow these crops ourselves. Backyard gardening is easy and a wonderful way to put fantastic heirloom varieties never seen in chain markets on the table and into the diet. There is a lot of satisfaction in eating a meal grown in your own garden.

carrots, baby carrots, red carrots, white carrots, backyard garden, carrot greens

Baby red and white carrots fresh from the garden.

Eating locally grown food whenever possible could ultimately save the human species from extinction. Given the current state of industrial agriculture, if some pest developed the ability to kill even two or three varieties of corn or wheat, a huge percentage of world-wide food production could be destroyed. Less food available and much higher prices for what survives leads to widespread starvation. This situation is avoided by growing larger numbers of varieties in smaller fields at the local level.