Much of the food that we buy in grocery stores has traveled hundreds to thousands of miles just to reach their destination. In order to stay fresh on its long journey, food often has to be packed and refrigerated. This means tons of carbon being emitted simply for the transportation of food. By eating locally, one guarantees that their food hasn’t traveled very far to reach their plate, thus causing a much smaller carbon footprint. Additionally, local farms often grow their produce using less pesticides than big, corporate producers. Industrial farms show less awareness and respect towards the surrounding land and allow for air and water pollution and wasting of water. Local farmers generally grow their products in a more environmentally conscious way as they conserve water, restrain from pesticide usage, and respect the land that they depend on.
My school has a very large community run garden where we grow vegetables, fruits, and herbs. Every week, we also sell soup made from the ingredients in the garden. This promotes the importance of locally grown food to the studen ts here, and informs them on the process and dedication that goes into maintaining a garden. At home, we grow herbs and vegetables which we regularly use in our cooking.

I love how our school does that! It is a great constant reminder of how we can be sustainable on our own. And I agree, it is very important that we start encouraging people to buy local foods, not only for the environment but also to support local farmers and businesses. By buying local, we can reduce our carbon footprint substantially. Just think, if you buy a pineapple at the grocery store, it was most likely flown from either Hawaii or Mexico, releasing a considerable amount of CO2 into the environment. We may not think about how these things affect the environment, since we can easily go to the store to pick them up. It is hard to imagine all the transportation involved in getting us the food we buy when it is so easily available to us. Two years ago, I was lucky enough to participate in an ecology research trip to Costa Rica, and we got to visit banana plantation. They each had their own landing strips for airplanes right in the fields. This really opened me up to how much goes into everything we buy and eat, and has inspired me to try to buy locally whenever possib le. I try to buy produce from the farmers markets and grow my own herbs. When we buy produce from the grocery store, we try to buy California grown, to try to reduce the amount of Carbon going into the atmosphere for our benefit.

Emma, not only does buying locally grown food reduce CO2 emissions and one's carbon footprint, it also stimulates the local economy and promotes small business owners/farmers! Unfortunately, some grocery items are unavailable from local sources. If this is the case, I believe that it is important to understand the source from where you are getting this food-- is it from a corporate factory or part of Monsanto? Is it from only a state away and notably creates healthy products? A great place to get locally sourced food are farmers markets. There, the growers can directly tell you about their product and leave out the guesswork that you have to use at the grocery store.