The Juicy Morsel: Why Eating Local Actually Makes Sense
Emily Clancy

“As a small farmer’s daughter and sister, I am concerned that my heritage and culture are fast disappearing. As a citizen, I am frightened at the rate that industry has taken control over our entire food system.”
– Laurie O’Neill

Working as a cashier at Deep Roots, I had a conversation with a customer who had grown up in the neighborhood. He usually came just to pick up a gallon of milk, but he was faithful. He told me that long before our store moved to Spring Garden Street, there had been a small grocery there. He loved the idea that a grocery still occupied the spot and the small-town feeling he got by shopping there. Likewise, more and more people are shopping at the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, gleeful with the choices – not just vegetables, but sausage, bread, and eggs that are produced locally. On the off days, many of the same things are available at Deep Roots Market. So, it seems that something feels right to us about eating locally. It is nostalgic, sure, but what’s the big deal about eating local food? I believe that eating with your food’s origins is better for your body, mind, AND spirit.

Some agricultural facts:  We know that North Carolina has an abundance of farmland, growing a great range of foods like eggs, poultry, hogs, strawberries, soybeans, corn, and peanuts. Some of our foods are nutritional superstars like sweet potatoes, resveratrol-rich muscadine grapes, blueberries full of fruit anthocyanins, and tomatoes. Since a local farmer usually sells his or her fruits and vegetables within 24 hours of picking, we can eat them at their peak. When the harvest is shipped in, they are often picked before they develop fully, and may take weeks to arrive. Sometimes they are enhanced with dyes to make sure they look nice – ripe, colorful, and seasonally delicious – even when they are actually nowhere close. Naturally ripe produce has more flavor, too, which is drawing more chefs to choose local vendors. Finally, fully ripe veggies and fruits are easier for you to digest, so you’ll absorb more of their nutrients – and avoid tummy aches.

Now, consider how local food might improve our economic well-being. In North Carolina, we export more than $2 billion in products each year. Knowing that the average American meal ingredient travels about 1500 miles from its source to arrive on our plates, I wonder if we might be able to grow even more of our own food. If NC becomes more food independent, we would not need to import or export so much, and our truckers would get to see their families more! On a larger scale, it is certain that supporting local growers improves the independence of the whole United States in the global economy, since we’d be so much more fuel efficient.

As we face our daily worries, three or more times a day we take our meals, confronted with worries about them as well. It's not enough to watch fat and carbs – we also wonder if the food on our plate is safe. The worry began with pesticide scares in the 1960s, and while we have banned some chemicals, others have replaced them and we wonder if organic standards are sufficient, if we are eating genetically modified foods, and if our food is being processed safely. We have become removed from processing food ourselves (for example, canning!), and in some ways, it has made our lives more enjoyable. As Wendell Berry points out, we like to have things out of season, and it's part of our culture now:  "If you want a raspberry, why shouldn't you have a raspberry?" But the consequence of our demand for out-of-season produce is what leads us to the uncertainty of its safety.

What can we do to ease our worry? Some years ago, I let go of my tendency to road rage, and began to see myself as part of the motion of the traffic on the road. Now, instead of assuming the trip has to include competition with other drivers, I drive with them or more slowly. Maybe we can do the same with what we eat, and let go of the expectations we have around food. When we eat what is available locally, we learn how and where it was grown. We might even get to meet the person responsible for that food, ask questions face-to-face, and have the joy of helping someone earn a livelihood.

When we begin to consider eating more local food, we may try to "convert" every item on our conventional menus. During the Eat Local Challenge last year, however, many of us learned that some of our favorite foods do not grow here – and thus did not have any local equivalent. It made our commitments truly challenging. That’s why we encourage people to start small. Making one or two local meals per week is certainly a more successful way of making it a permanent habit, just as you do not start an exercise program with a marathon. The real lesson, though, is that a person who has only local food to eat will make do with what they have, and there is a satisfaction in this simplicity.

Laurie O’Neill captures this way of “making do”:  “The other night, we had a simple organic meal of field peas, corn on the cob, and baked sweet potatoes. I grew the field peas in my garden and froze them. I bought the corn at Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market this summer and froze it. … It was a very easy, quickly prepared meal." Notice that you could eat chicken or meat when it is available, but in the meantime, it is easy and nutritionally complete to make a meal of those things, and it doesn’t take much time. Our meals are simpler, and our worries are put to rest.

“A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.” – Wendell Berry

Emily Clancy is the Ownership, Outreach, and Marketing Director at Deep Roots Market. She lives in High Point with her husband Charles, her stepson Aaron, and cat, Q. This year she is going to make homemade sun-dried garden-grown tomatoes and enjoy them on the back porch. She can be reached at Deep Roots Market at 336.292.9216, x5, or info@deeprootsmarket.com.

References/see also:

What Are People For? By Wendell Berry, 1990, North Point Press

An Interview with Wendell Berry, Dave Hage, Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 11, 2007

http://slowlysheturned.net, a blog by Laurie O’Neill, Greensboro