Highlighting The Importance of Local Food and Agriculture

We figured we’d kick off the 2024 season by reflecting on one of the main motivations for our farm in the first place – local food, and why we believe it’s an essential part of our lives.

Eating Like a Farmer

First and foremost, local food is good for you. Studies consistenly show that food grown locally and sustainably is higher in vitamins and minerals, healthy protiens, and fiber. This is precisely because small-scale, local growers value the quality of products over simpler metrics like weight. The more biodiversity surrounding a plant as it grows, the more nutrient biodiversity that plant is able to make use of and pass along to you!

Furthermore, local food tastes good. Anyone that has ever bitten into a cherry tomato plucked directly from the vine or crunched a fresh carrot can instantly distinguish them from their big-box counterparts. These two facts are no coincidence! Farm fresh fruits and vegetables taste so good because of their nutrient density. In this way, local food is the best of both worlds. “Eating like a farmer” means creating meals that are unbeatable in both taste and nutrition.

Stewarding the Environment

Concerns over the environment are everywhere you look, and agriculture has its fair share of challenges. Deforestation, erosion, chemical contamination, fertilizer runoff, carbon emissions, and the list goes on. While local food doesn’t necessarily solve all of these problems, it certainly makes overcoming these environmental challenges seem more possible.

The obvious benefit of local food is that it doesn’t require long haul truck transport to go from farm to table. For us, a quick trip in the van is all we need to take our produce from the dirt to your plate. Additionally, because we’re intentionally small-scale, we can give our land the care it deserves, and we’re motivated to make the place we live as environmentally healthy as possible.

Building Resilient Communities

When you can have a conversation with your farmer about how they grew their food, you have the highest level of awareness of the impact of that food on the environment and the people who consume it. Conversely, when farmers are directly integrated to their communities, they are accountable to contributing positively to that community. This connection cannot exist if food is not grown locally.

Economic instability, while often discussed and expressed nationally and globally, is often felt most locally. As is true of many small businesses, having robust local food producers contributes to the stability of the communities they serve. Farmers who have local customers are also more resilient: they don’t rely on vast fields of single crops that may fail. They’re also not beholden to the whims of large wholesale marketing companies, but rather to folks that they know and recognize in their communities.

Looking Ahead

The local food movement is steadily growing, and we at Good Dirt Farm are honored to be a part of it. Understanding the issues with today’s food model provides a roadmap for building a better, more environmentally friendly, healthier, and tastier system!

If you’d like to learn more about our local food or subscribe to the CSA, visit our website.