A recent Commentary piece published in the April 1st edition of the Chieftain from the Capital Press states that “the lone advantage of food grown near the consumer is a smaller fuel bill for the truck. Beyond that, it’s difficult to see how food grown across the region is any better, or worse, than any other food.”
I beg to differ. Although the term “local” can be stretched to mean different geographic extents, “local” food available at farmers markets is often required to be from the same county, surrounding counties, or only several counties away. This is the case with the farmers markets in Wallowa County.
Freshness greatly affects the nutrition of fruits and vegetables: as soon as you pick produce, vitamin and mineral content begin to decrease. Plus, many fruits on an industrial scale are picked unripe, meaning that their nutritional content doesn’t develop to its full potential.
Buying produce at your farmers markets means that it was picked within days, sometimes hours, of being sold, that it was picked ripe, and that it’s full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Buying directly from a farmer creates a relationship of trust: you can speak directly to him or her about their practices, where it was grown, and how they treat their employees.
Although food from large scale farms in California and Mexico might be certified organic, agri-corporations find all sorts of loopholes around organic certification rules. Further, you have no way of verifying how workers are treated on the massive farms in Mexico that produce much of our fruits and vegetables. A recent exposé in the LA Times (“Hardship on Mexico’s Farms, a Bounty for US tables”) showed that workers on those huge farms are treated like slaves.
Yes, you can’t get a local strawberry in January, as the unnamed author of this (Capital Press) piece brilliantly pointed out. But the non-local strawberry you can get? Do you know how whoever picked it was being treated? And does that non-local strawberry even taste good? Or was it picked nearly green so that it tastes like a mildly-sweet-kind-of-strawberry?
Because taste is the most fun part of eating local food. Try it for yourself: try a strawberry from the Wallowa County Farmers Market this summer, in Enterprise Thursday 4-7 and Joseph Saturdays 10-2, and compare it to a strawberry from Mexico in January, and tell me that they aren’t two entirely different animals. The local strawberry will be smaller, sweeter, full of complex flavors and extremely nutritious. The strawberry from Mexico will be large and Styrofoam-like.
Right now, the Lower Valley Farmers Market is open in Wallowa Fridays 12-6 and Saturdays 11-4. It is open year-round, and in the winter offers a variety of canned and frozen local produce, processed at the peak of its nutritional content. At Lower Valley Farmers Market, Bear Creek Gardens has the most delightful bags of spring lettuces, mixed with micro greens. The mix is full of flavor, nearly the same price as the stuff from Mexico, and packs a nutritional punch that would knock-out those sad little plastic clam-shells. And, might I mention, 100% listeria free?
Cited: (http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-camps/)
Lauren Johnson, a Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) Americorps volunteer, serves as community food systems coordinator in Wallowa County. She’s based in Enterprise, at the Northeast Oregon Economic Development District office.
Originally Published in Wallowa County Chieftain
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