The Local Food Network
Eating local is good for all of us - Gaye Symington
July 26, 2007
Early this week I stayed up too late, waiting for bread to bake. This particular batch of bread was important because it was made with grain and maple syrup produced less than 100 miles away. This meant it would fit into the "Eat Local Challenge" I have committed to for the week.
As I waited for the bread, I thought about the connection between Eat Local Challenges and the economic opportunities and challenges facing Vermont agriculture. Eat Local events are only partly about whether you can make it through the week without olive oil, Big Macs or orange juice. Eating local means eating more nutritious and better tasting food. It also reduces the carbon footprint of our food system where, by one estimate, 90 percent of the fossil fuel energy used in the world's food system goes into packaging, transportation and marketing — not into actual production.
More fundamentally, however, breaking out of old habits for a week encourages me to establish food consumption patterns that better support the working landscape I associate with home. If as a result I increase our local food purchasing for the rest of the year, I increase the horsepower of our agricultural economy.
Economist Doug Hoffer writes, "If Vermont substituted local products for only 10 percent of the food we import, it would result in $376 million in new economic output, including $69 million in personal earnings from 3,616 jobs."
Eating local reinforces what is unique about Vermont's agricultural opportunities — our proximity to major markets, and our identity as a state where people trust each other and where we value our farmers, our working landscape and our natural resources.
Eating local draws attention to the individual people and places behind our produce, whether it's Vermont Co-op Milk, Ripton-grown Gleason's Grains, Intervale lettuce greens or berries, award-winning Cabot cheese, Champlain Orchards apple snacks, Greensboro's Bailey-Hazen blue cheese, Putney-raised lamb or Jericho Settlers' grass fed beef. I know the pastures where the meat I consume was raised — they are part of my community landscape. I know and trust the farmers who are growing the carrots my family consumes year-round.
This aspect of our identity is also critical in linking Boston consumers with Vermont farms. When the Lois McClure travels down the Hudson or through the Finger Lakes serving Vermont cheese, and when Jay Peak Ski Resort highlights Vermont-made products to visiting skiers, we are expressing our brand, the individuality of our farmers and the unique quality of Vermont agricultural products. This allows New York and Boston consumers to feel, as I do, that when they consume Vermont products, they are connecting with fields they consider their back yards and farmers they know and trust.
Those unique qualities and identity enable us to diversify our agricultural base away from commodity production that values low production costs; away from relying on expensive imported feeds loaded with nutrients that will make their way from one end of the cow to the other and then into our streams and lakes; away from a food system of anonymous global entities where seemingly unavoidable contamination breeds irrational national agricultural policies that only further emphasize factory conditions for food production.
Eat Local Challenges also remind us that a diversified Vermont agricultural economy can't flourish only by producing gourmet cheese for Manhattan consumers or the chefs of Vermont's best restaurants, though both are important. Vermont meat and produce need to show up in our schools, hospitals, lunch boxes and workplace cafeterias.
A creative approach to industrial menus can support that shift. New distribution facilities will be required in order to bundle small farm produce into large quantities for industrial-scale customers. Creative business plans will nudge farmers to rethink their unique strengths and opportunities and build new direct-to-consumer relationships, so they can become more viable for the long term. Branding and packaging can assure consumers of the place of origin, and with that, the reliability and quality of food products. Finally, political leadership can and must provide an overall vision for this new diversified Vermont agriculture, as well as economic resources to build its infrastructure.
Creativity in our food production, marketing, and consumption can help us realize a viable and uniquely Vermont agricultural economy whose authenticity adds value in an otherwise anonymous food system.
Gaye Symington, a Democrat from Jericho, is speaker of the Vermont House. She is development coordinator for the Intervale Center in Burlington. For more information about regional Eat Local challenges visit www.localvoreproject.org.
Early this week I stayed up too late, waiting for bread to bake. This particular batch of bread was important because it was made with grain and maple syrup produced less than 100 miles away. This meant it would fit into the "Eat Local Challenge" I have committed to for the week.
As I waited for the bread, I thought about the connection between Eat Local Challenges and the economic opportunities and challenges facing Vermont agriculture. Eat Local events are only partly about whether you can make it through the week without olive oil, Big Macs or orange juice. Eating local means eating more nutritious and better tasting food. It also reduces the carbon footprint of our food system where, by one estimate, 90 percent of the fossil fuel energy used in the world's food system goes into packaging, transportation and marketing — not into actual production.
More fundamentally, however, breaking out of old habits for a week encourages me to establish food consumption patterns that better support the working landscape I associate with home. If as a result I increase our local food purchasing for the rest of the year, I increase the horsepower of our agricultural economy.
Economist Doug Hoffer writes, "If Vermont substituted local products for only 10 percent of the food we import, it would result in $376 million in new economic output, including $69 million in personal earnings from 3,616 jobs."
Eating local reinforces what is unique about Vermont's agricultural opportunities — our proximity to major markets, and our identity as a state where people trust each other and where we value our farmers, our working landscape and our natural resources.
Eating local draws attention to the individual people and places behind our produce, whether it's Vermont Co-op Milk, Ripton-grown Gleason's Grains, Intervale lettuce greens or berries, award-winning Cabot cheese, Champlain Orchards apple snacks, Greensboro's Bailey-Hazen blue cheese, Putney-raised lamb or Jericho Settlers' grass fed beef. I know the pastures where the meat I consume was raised — they are part of my community landscape. I know and trust the farmers who are growing the carrots my family consumes year-round.
This aspect of our identity is also critical in linking Boston consumers with Vermont farms. When the Lois McClure travels down the Hudson or through the Finger Lakes serving Vermont cheese, and when Jay Peak Ski Resort highlights Vermont-made products to visiting skiers, we are expressing our brand, the individuality of our farmers and the unique quality of Vermont agricultural products. This allows New York and Boston consumers to feel, as I do, that when they consume Vermont products, they are connecting with fields they consider their back yards and farmers they know and trust.
Those unique qualities and identity enable us to diversify our agricultural base away from commodity production that values low production costs; away from relying on expensive imported feeds loaded with nutrients that will make their way from one end of the cow to the other and then into our streams and lakes; away from a food system of anonymous global entities where seemingly unavoidable contamination breeds irrational national agricultural policies that only further emphasize factory conditions for food production.
Eat Local Challenges also remind us that a diversified Vermont agricultural economy can't flourish only by producing gourmet cheese for Manhattan consumers or the chefs of Vermont's best restaurants, though both are important. Vermont meat and produce need to show up in our schools, hospitals, lunch boxes and workplace cafeterias.
A creative approach to industrial menus can support that shift. New distribution facilities will be required in order to bundle small farm produce into large quantities for industrial-scale customers. Creative business plans will nudge farmers to rethink their unique strengths and opportunities and build new direct-to-consumer relationships, so they can become more viable for the long term. Branding and packaging can assure consumers of the place of origin, and with that, the reliability and quality of food products. Finally, political leadership can and must provide an overall vision for this new diversified Vermont agriculture, as well as economic resources to build its infrastructure.
Creativity in our food production, marketing, and consumption can help us realize a viable and uniquely Vermont agricultural economy whose authenticity adds value in an otherwise anonymous food system.
Gaye Symington, a Democrat from Jericho, is speaker of the Vermont House. She is development coordinator for the Intervale Center in Burlington. For more information about regional Eat Local challenges visit www.localvoreproject.org.
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