It is very important to me that my food be locally sourced. The big reason is taste. I grew up eating food picked five minutes ago. It tastes dramatically better than grocery store food or food that has been around for days or more than a week.
Originally, I started eating organic, not because I cared about pesticides (although I don’t really like them) but because organic food was the freshest around. You couldn’t preserve it like store-bought food. So organic was a way of getting fresher food.
Honestly, I don’t care about organic. The chemicals are the same, as far as I can tell. Sure, I don’t want pesticides to remain on my food, but that’s not my primary concern.
I’m a gastronome. And that’s not a short fat guy with a flatulence problem.
Now, despite that being my primary concern, I am also happy to support local farms. It has so many other advantages. Not nearly as much oil is used if you eat local organic food. There’s less oil to transport the food, and less to fertilize it. So the local movement fits in with my environmental concerns.
In addition, farmers markets are an incredible place. You see all your neighbors. You make all kinds of connections. It’s almost my office away from the office. My market just celebrated its tenth anniversay, and is the oldest continuously running market in the city. There was music and crowds and everything! We’re still better than that upstart market in Old City. They might have more vendors and they might have a hoity toity clientele, but our folks are real. We need the market. It’s not just a plaything for us.