My favorite, of course, is my own local market. The farmer's I visit most often recognize me when I swing by. I'm looking to get a CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, subscription with one of my favorite farms if things work out all right.
Winter makes it tough, though. Prices go up, and there's less and less at the market. Sure, I can still hit the co-op, but their selection dwindles too, and more and more of it comes from California as the winter drags on colder and colder. It's kind of a dilemma - I want to keep supporting local farmers, but there's not much TO support unless I want to live off of potatoes, onions, cheese and frozen blueberries. Those are all great foods, of course, and I eat 'em aplenty, but a girl has to get her greens and fruit.
I've finally come to accept this, though. Sometimes you do what you have to do. I'm always conscious of just how far my food has traveled to reach me, and I try to support local groceries instead of national chains, but I think, during these dark times, I'm okay with my pears coming from Chile. Yeah, it's not ideal, but they're delicious.
Wintertime also means I up my consumption of canned goods, which tend to come from all over the place too. I get some stuff locally, sure, but again - the prices are higher. It's not cost effective to buy the locally caned tomatoes in glass jars. In the summer, I can buy fresh ones, but in the winter? I'm not paying eight dollars for twelve ounces of canned tomatoes, sorry.
I'm pretty privileged, as a single, healthy young person. I don't eat a whole lot and I can afford the nice stuff in the summertime. There are a lot of people who can't even then, and I'm lucky I can do it for as many months out of the year as I can. Heck, even just living in a city makes it easier and cheaper. The farmer's market is a quick walk from my apartment, and at a time convenient enough to me that I can go nearly every single week.
It feels kind of weird justifying it all to myself, but in the end staying healthy and alive wins out over adhering to some bourgeois compulsion towards "ethical" consumption. Really, I'm only able to be "ethical" when I've got money for it. I can go on forever about how supporting local farms helps small business and keeps money in the local community, rather than feeding massive corporations who want to stamp out competition and exploit the heck out of tax loopholes. I could go on, and on and on.
Buying local makes me feel better, and may or may not have a small effect, but in the end I'm not changing the world because I know the name of the guy who makes my cheese.
That's okay.
I'm not destroying the planet by eating some oranges shipped from California, either.
