The food we eat not only nourishes us but connects us to each other. Local growers work tirelessly to provide delicious, nutritious, and sustainable food for their families and community.

Here are 15 fantastic reasons why you should support local growers.

1. Taste Is Everything

The fruits and veggies you buy at the farmer’s market and farm stands are the freshest and tastiest available. 

The produce is allowed to ripen fully in the field and brought to you directly from the farmer.

There is no long-distance traveled, no ripening along the way, no sitting for weeks in storage.

The food is legit, fresh from the farm.

2. Environmentally Friendly

Since a lot of the food you buy off the grocery store shelf most likely came from halfway around the world before reaching your kitchen, a ton of energy and gas was spent transporting it.

Food purchased from local growers only travels a few kilometers, which greatly reduces its carbon footprint.

3. Know Your Grower

You actually meet the farmers who grow your food when you purchase from them. This allows you to ask questions like when it was grown, picked, and even the best way to prepare it.

4. Supporting Sustainability

Growers generally follow sustainable farming practices in order to produce healthy food to help sustain the local community.  

The community, in turn, provides the money necessary to sustain the farmers by purchasing their goods.

5. Organic and Non-GMO

Many local growers use organic methods to grow their produce. They are also more likely to use non-genetically modified seeds.

Even if a farm is not certified organic, you can ask the grower directly how they grow their produce so you can be certain that there are no pesticides or GMO’s used. 

6. Locally Grown Produce Improves Genetic Diversity

In our modern agriculture system, plant varieties are chosen for their ability to ripen uniformly, withstand harvesting, survive packing, and last a long time on the shelf. This means there is limited genetic diversity in large-scale production.

In contrast, smaller local farms grow many different varieties of crops to provide a long harvest season, a multitude of colours, and the best flavours.

7. Supporting Local Economy

The money you spend on locally grown produce goes further because it helps people stay in communities, and grow their businesses.

As they grow, they will need to employ more local people that will also buy from local suppliers, further increasing the value of your dollar.

No middle-man means that farmers get more of what you pay for the foods, which is fair since they are putting in a ton of work too.

8. Shop For The Season

The produce you buy from local growers is seasonal. It is fresh and delicious.

Shopping and cooking with locally grown produce can help you reconnect with the cycles of nature in your region. You will look forward to asparagus in the spring, lettuce in the summer, and squash in the fall.

Shopping for the season will allow you to experience veggies you may have never tried before and expand your culinary horizon.

9. Helps Preserve Greenspace and Farmland

By supporting local growers, you help to protect their land from being bought up by developers and being turned into parking lots and buildings.

10. Affordability

Just from the sheer nutrition you get from locally grown produce compared to grocery store produce, it’s a really good value.

Grocery stores charge an arm and a leg for organic fruits and veg. 

However, most locally grown produce is not typically much more expensive than conventionally grown produce.

The benefits of supporting local growers (and your health) typically outweigh any price variance.

11. Local Produce Is Safe

When you purchase from a local grower, you can look that farmer directly in the eye, or even drive by the fields where the produce is grown. 

Local growers are not anonymous and they take their responsibility to the consumer seriously.

12. Reduce Food Waste

A proportion of food grown for grocery stores is rejected because it is the ‘wrong size or shape’ but it is still perfectly good food.

Farmers selling local foods offer nothing but the best, including small, large, and irregular shapes because that’s nature.

13. Locally Grown Food Benefits The Environment and Wildlife

Well-managed local farms provide many benefits to the ecosystem.

Including:

• Conserving fertile soil
• Protecting water sources
• Sequestering carbon from the atmosphere

The farm environment is a cornucopia of fields, meadows, woods, ponds, and buildings which provide a habitat for wildlife in your community.

14. Reduce Packaging

Unnecessary food packaging accounts for a large proportion of waste in both costs and materials.

Buying directly from your local grower allows you to buy less paper, cardboard, and plastic.

Even better, bring your own containers and bags, and there will be no packaging at all!

15. Investing In The Future

By supporting local growers today, you are helping to ensure that there will be farms in your community tomorrow.

This is an important matter, especially in light of an uncertain energy future and our current reliance on fossil fuels to produce, package, distribute, and store food.

If you are not sure where to find local growers in your area, I recommend checking out Instagram, Facebook, and of course, your local farmer’s markets.

What is your preferred method to contact local growers that we may not know about?

I’ll go first.

REKO networks are a fairly new idea here in Canada and are a great way to order locally grown food and other homemade items from producers near you. 

The REKO network allows you to order on Facebook directly from the producer and pick it up at a set date and time. Easy Peasy!

A simple Google search will tell you whether or not there is a REKO network in your area.

Stay Local,

Kathy & Jon

Your Friendly Neighbourhood Growers