04/05/2020
AN URGENT CALL TO EAT... LOCAL!
For those of us with the capacity and privilege at this time to shift or amplify our food choices, never before in recent history has it been so important to purchase AS MUCH product as we can made by smaller local foodmakers.
- Everyone needs support at this time, but the smaller the foodmaker, the less capacity they have to weather supply chain disruptions, food safety protocol changes or new capital expenditures required to adapt. If we want them to still be around on the other end of this, not only do we need to eat their food, WE NEED TO EAT MORE OF IT.
- Many foodmakers have just lost one or two of their most important markets - Restaurants (and other foodservice) and in some cases Farmers' Markets*. This has been devastating. GROCERY STORES, bakeries/butchers/fishmongers have become increasingly IMPORTANT venues right now where eaters and local foodmakers can interface (and direct from the foodmaker if possible). *note many jurisdictions are permitting pared down markets and some also going online
- EATING LOCAL FOOD creates jobs in our communities. No community has become immune to layoffs. We can eat our way into a new economic reality.
What does it look like then for us, in record numbers, to shift our food purchases as much as we can to local???
..for the LOCAL DAIRY, it means running out of milk/cheese/yogurt and having to increase production, and hire more workers
..for the LOCAL COFFEE ROASTER, it means running out of coffee, increasing production, hiring more workers (and most likely sending fairer wages to the farmers)
. for the LOCAL EGG PRODUCER, it means running out of eggs, increasing production, and hiring more workers
..for the LOCAL PASTA MAKER, it means running out of pasta, increasing production, and hiring more workers
.. for the LOCAL BAKER, it means running out of bread, increasing production, hiring more workers (and a good chance sending those food dollars to the local farmers growing the grains)
and for all of these foodmakers, increasing production, hiring more workers, all translates into more of our food dollars being invested by those foodmakers/workers into the other local businesses they too use.... legal and financial, marketing, design, printing... not to mention every locally-owned business currently closed that will desperately need revolutionary acts of our support when they are able to re-open. We can prepare for this now by 'banking' and 'investing' our food dollars in the pockets of our local foodmakers and our local grocers.
THE TIME TO LIVE AND BREATHE A MORE LOCALIZED, RESILIENT FUTURE IS NOW.... and we can do it with our shopping carts.
In support of a new normal
- Jon Steinman, Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants
🛒😍🌈
