Topics of this column have recently touched on ‘big picture’ issues impacting Rockbridge agriculture and how our national food system is being shaped by the economics of geopolitical events. Now is a good time to remember the food purchasing choices we make matter and we can make a difference for local farms that are marketing products in Rockbridge.
Rockbridge is blessed with multiple farmers’ markets, farm fresh subscription services (where people can sign up for regular deliveries of farm products from local farms), and even self-serve on-farm grocery kiosks that make local eggs, dairy products, and other foods available when it suits the buyer.
Your columnist must confess that, like so many people in Rockbridge who eat, I too often follow the path of least resistance by popping into a local big box store where I can pick up grape tomatoes and toilet paper on the same trip. I, and all of us, need to be more intentional in seizing the opportunity to support a community of local farmers who supply fresh products that often come with a range of attributes that make them superior to what the big box store has on offer. Case in point are leafy greens available locally now that, because of the very short trip they have from the soil in Rockbridge to my refrigerator, consistently have a shelf life 10 days to two weeks longer than the shipped-in produce at the grocery.
The way economists measure economic impacts favors products that are transformed in some manner that add value such as the chickens that are raised here and converted in oven-ready boneless wings and skinless chicken breasts. So, while locally grown and purchased radishes or asparagus cannot claim such a huge “value-add,” the dollar spent on them with a local farmer is far more likely to stay in our community and move from the farmer to another local business.
We are blessed in this country with a food system that delivers phenomenal range of choices at exceptionally low prices (less than 13% of U.S. household income goes to food on average, and half of that amount is spent on dining out!). But ours is a food system fraught with vulnerabilities and indirect subsidies. The general supply chain disruptions caused by the Covid pandemic, followed by the narrower disruption avian influenza brought to the supply and price of eggs, gave us a glimpse of just how fragile our food system is.
All the farms in the Mid-Atlantic cannot supply us with the full range of food choices to which we have become accustomed, but our intentional effort to support our local and regional food system will foster a resource we might one day realize is far more valuable than we think today. Let’s all try to be a little more intentional about our food choices and make time to invest a few of our food dollars in locally produced food.
