Local dispatch: A headline from your local farmer -- 'We're Booming!'
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Recently on the way back from the mailbox to retrieve the newspaper, I was struck by the headline: "Bad Trend." It seemed like the 30th bad news headline in a row: "A Fight for Survival." "Some Shoppers Go Without." "Financial Genius on Verge of Disaster." It was the last straw. It's time someone heard some good news!
The local food business is thriving -- despite the "real economy."
Demand for locally produced food is far outstripping supply. In my 30 years farming and marketing locally, this was our best year ever. More telling is that there has been no big "bubble" but just steady growth over that entire time. And throughout this fall there was a steady drumbeat -- like never before -- from those wishing to buy our local produce next season. I hear from other farmers around the state and other regions the very same thing.
What is making it thrive are some really fundamental factors and certainly these would lead one to think it isn't some flash-in-the-pan phenomenon but a truly sustainable movement.
It all starts with a geometrically increasing consumer base which "gets it" -- that real food from local sources can, and does, promote health. That spending those food dollars for local foods promotes in one action many things most of us want -- the freshest things the earth can provide for our table at a reasonable price; the comfort of knowing where our food has come from and how it was produced, i.e. transparency and trust; and beautiful agricultural landscapes in one's vicinity. Locally produced food does all these things while tasting so ... good.
Observing firsthand the connection between our physical world and our own sustenance, i.e. having farms nearby, gives citizens a sense of peace, security and well-being. The practice of agriculture models characteristics in the human spirit that are worth encouraging in the citizenry -- hard work, honesty, connectedness, thrift, adaptability, inventiveness, recognition of the divine, artistry in the aesthetics of place and responsibility.
Yes, we can try to teach these things to our children in our educational institutions, but immersion is always the best teaching method. Farming exerts far more influence on the quality of our lives than even mere dollars would suggest. People are rediscovering this and the fact they value it is attested by this explosion of local food sales.
First Published January 5, 2009 12:00 am
