Your Health is Her Health

When you buy wholesome, locally-grown food at a local farmers' market, you're not just making a healthy choice for yourself. You're also giving a boost to your local economy and aiding in the creation of local networks of mutual interdependency. Such networks are crucial to our creating a viable economic future that serves OUR needs, and is beyond the deathly grip of giant corporations. Maybe even more importantly, you're doing something that addresses the global warming crisis.

Global warming is neither a mystery nor a theory; it's here, and easily gauged by monitoring the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"Before the industrial revolution, the Earth's atmosphere contained about 280 parts per million of carbon dioxide," Bill McKibben wrote in a 10/07 Nat Geo article, "Carbon's New Math." "...When we began measuring in the late 1950s, it had already reached the 315 level. Now it's at 380, and increasing by roughly two parts per million annually. That doesn't sound like very much, but it turns out that the extra heat that CO2 traps, a couple of watts per square meter of the Earth's surface, is enough to warm the planet considerably. We've raised the temperature more than a degree Fahrenheit (0.56 degrees Celsius) already."

When people shop farmers' markets at locations close to home, the buyers and especially the sellers save transportation costs and cut down on fossil fuel consumption. Plus, local family farms, especially the organic operations, forego the petroleum "inputs" favored by agribusiness -- chemical fertilizers and pesticides. So besides eating better than you would if you bought Hot Pockets at Wal-Mart, you're doing your mother earth a favor.

Just as importantly, you're contributing to local enterprise and the growth of a healthy and robust local economy. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an independent nonprofit advocacy and lobbying group headquartered in Minneapolis, has studied the dynamics of local and statewide economies, and determined that "for every $100 spent locally, nearly $54 ends up back in the local economy...(but) for every $100 spent at a chain store all but about $14 flows out of state."*

(*Source: The Port Ludlow Voice; May, 2009 (p. 38).)