The local food movement in Chattanooga has been gaining ground for some time, and for good reason. Local produce, meats — and now, cheese — mainly produced by small local farmers are generally fresher, tastier and healthier than older, more chemically-laden and factory-processed foods. Local food also offers the additional benefits of sustaining local jobs and boosting the local economy by keeping more of our food dollars circulating here.
The environmental benefits are equally significant. Foodstuffs purchased in area groceries are transported, on average, around 1,500 miles. That average owes to a vast national system of food importation from distant places — apples and farmed salmon from Chile, produce from Central America, and tilapia from unregulated stock ponds in China, among many other imported foods.
An unhealthy status quo
All that transport of intensively treated food from distant sources, in turn, sends our food dollars out of our local economy, even as it imposes tremendous health, energy and pollution costs on Americans generally.
Time was, things were different. A generation or two ago, local farmers could still take steers, hogs and poultry to local slaughterhouses, and sell their fresh produce to local buyers and wholesalers, or at local farmers’ markets.