From my perspective as an avid reader on global warming and its impact on bio-diversity and farming, let me add to Co-op communication by responding to the following remarks by three leaders at our Co-op:

• “Local food is just a fad.”
• “I’m tired of hearing local; it’s organic I care about.”
• “Our customers won’t always pay extra for local.”

Just how important is “local” to our mission, health and success — and to our globe? Consider that our community may be better informed on matters of health and nutrition, than on the science of dramatic and dangerous climate change and its impact on food — because of the complexity and seeming controversy around the issue. And consider that global warming has, is and will continue to progress due to the hundred-year life of CO2 in the atmosphere.* And also consider the impact of dwindling, expensive, polluting fossil fuel.

A four word response, too important to be a cliché, bears repeating: Think globally, act locally.

Sustainable local is a healthy and delicious way to avoid the massive amounts of CO2 emitted during food production and consumption — the fossil fuel-based fertilizing, fumigating, over-processing, freezing, over-packaging, transporting and marketing of the food eaten every day. (Note about transport of food: I’m not talking bananas or coffee — rather oranges from Africa, apples from Asia, pears from South America and cookies from Europe.)

So, local food is more than just a fad. Local must be our immediate and longterm future. Returning to locally produced food, energy, manufactured foods, etc., is a large and sensible solution to a huge problem of a changing planet.

We should care about organic, of course, but with some considerations. The organic pear I bought recently at the Co-op with the Argentina label didn’t taste good, and long-distance agribusiness organic, with its decreasing standards and oversight, is no longer an easy choice. And because I wanted to eat the 100 Mile Diet all summer, I shopped for produce outside the Co-op.

Everything I have received weekly from my local CSA has delighted me for the last four months. Although this local farm (Fox Creek Farm) has taken the NOFA pledge, it is a new farm that can’t afford the thousand-dollar fee for organic paperwork, but goes further than those standards. It uses no chemical inputs and also supplies its own solar electric and irrigation system, as well as running its vehicle on used vegetable oil!

A second local farm, where I have recently purchased no-spray raspberries and strawberries and also plum tomatoes by the bushel for canning, limits fertilizers and pesticides through integrated pest management. I ask each time I go to the farm store, Carrot Barn, whether any toxins are used on a particular crop. The farmer tells me, for instance, that the tomatoes were only treated with copper, which is allowable by organic standards. (Note: Studies have shown that there is an alarming decrease of nutrients in foods grown on conventional farms, so we need to open dialogues with conventional local farmers.)

Local wears many hats, all of which are lower carbon. The problem for me was that all this just-picked local was not available at the Co-op. And that summer Co-op space was taken up by produce from afar.

At this point consumer support is needed for a local, sustainable food system, since our government has been subsidizing long-distance, monoculture agribusiness with our taxes for decades. The $90 billion Farm Bill essentially ignores small farms.

“Leading with local” at the Co-op means our managers’ personal, grassroots outreach to individual farmers, working with them financially by offering them contracts, by subsidizing prices for a time, and by helping them find grants for infrastructure as greenhouses and root cellars. Leading with local means our marketing and deli managers’ expanding their local sales, and also catering to organizations, day care centers and other businesses, and so creating more markets for farmers and ourselves. And local needs to be increasingly four season (through lactofermentation, root cellar storage, freezing, etc.).

Caveat: There is a need to lead quickly in this time of planetary emergency, and it should be said that some supermarket chains (e.g., Whole Foods and Hannaford), and even global food corporations, are already aggressively approaching our local farmers with offers of aid and contracts.

Here’s to our Co-op as leader and our Co-op as the one stop shop for all our seasonal local produce and, eventually, for most of our four-season local foods.

Reading suggestions for informed consumers: Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and Flannery’s The Weather Makers.