What is the term "local" typically defined as? Studies show that the majority of consumers who buy food products labeled as locally grown define them as "made or produced within a hundred miles or made within my state." This is a colossal undermining of what the motive behind buying local food & produce is meant to be. If food is being mass produced by large-scale industrial facilities, whose profit relies on shelf life and appearance of their products, the location at which it's being produced is entirely irrelevant. Consumers are generally unaware of the benefits of buying legitimately locally and sustainably produced foods coming from local family farms and crops, so critical questions present themselves; what are the benefits of buying local & what more to them is there to consider than just being produced close to home?.
Surveyors at Sustainable Table, a nonprofit organization founded solely for the purpose of informing and educating consumers on the problems with our food supply, strive to promote the benefits of buying local for the consumer, the producer and the local economy. Of these benefits the most substantial and relevant would have to be that of the consumer's; people are accustomed to paying for genetically "enhanced" foods loaded with GMO's and preservatives opposed to food organically grown in a manner respective to its nutritional value. Buying local is quite literally jumping that gap and switching to a much healthier, more beneficial alternative. Sustainably produced foods are cultivated exclusively for their taste and nutritional characteristics, these are foods that ripen on their own time and retain the vitamins & minerals they're commonly sought-out for and hold a much richer, less synthetic taste. Foods that possess these qualities could be considered the paragon of what a human diet should consist of, this is something that large-scale manufacturers of food products fail to offer.