Eating locally grown foods offers many benefits to growers, consumers, the environment, and the community. Local food has more nutrients and ensures a safer food supply than the foods at many large grocery store chains, where the food is shipped from across or even outside the country. With locally grown food, you have the power of knowing exactly where your food was raised.


Farmers spend a lot of time and energy raising healthy, nutrient-rich food for their communities. But is it something your family needs? Absolutely! Here are the reasons why when it is possible, you should incorporate fruits, vegetables, and meat sourced from local farmers into your family's diet.

The Quality Is Better

When food is not locally grown, fruits, vegetables, and meats are transported from hundreds of miles away. Most often, these foods come from other countries, which means the quality is always at risk. Put simply, quality control at the borders for imports of fruits, vegetables, and meats is necessary because these items have been sitting in storage and shipping for so long.

Locally grown food does not spend days on a truck or airplane. The food at a farmer's market is fresh and grown nearby. You know the source of these crops.

But you don't have to buy all your food at farmer's markets, especially since that can get tricky in the off-seasons. Food delivery services like Seven Sons farms offer consumers the opportunity to eat meat sourced from their ethically raised pastures. Their cows are grass-fed with non-GMO guarantees. The pork, poultry, and eggs are all pasture-raised.

A lot of farms like Seven Sons have open-door policies and even offer behind-the-scenes tours to consumers. Food labels from these ethical local farms are very straightforward, with no confusing or unhealthy ingredients.

It Supports Local Economies

The money you spend at a local farmer's market keeps the economy close by, instead of giving your money to major corporations that import their food and products from around the world. Reinvesting the money made from farmer's markets is crucial for farmers and your local economy.

For farmers, your purchases allow them to continue providing quality food to the public. This money helps to improve the economy around your community, rather than the entire world.

You Can Find Out the Exact Source of Your Food

Employees in grocery stores cannot tell you exactly the farm or farmer that raised your food, only the country from which it comes. Often, the circumstances under which food is transported is questionable.

At markets, farmers can tell you exactly what the animals eat and what conditions they are raised under. Each farmer harvests and raises their crops differently, so local growers can offer insight into their individual processes.

When you know exactly where your food was raised and who was taking care of it, you know a lot more about the food you are feeding to your family.

It's Better for Your Health

Certain produce, such as tomatoes, undergo an irradiation process to ensure quality control during this lengthy shipping process. When produce is imported and not in season, it is ripened artificially instead of naturally. Companies use ripening chemicals such as ethylene gas.

Even if local farmers are not fully certified organic, they still often use fewer pesticides than the large farms for industrial purposes. Produce grown closer to home retains more nutrients because it is allowed to ripen naturally.

So Many Benefits of Local Food

When you eat from the fruit and vegetable stand down the street instead of the commercial grocery store, you are supporting the local economy, keeping your money close to home. This is also helping farmers invest in their crops, pastures, and animals to produce better food at a higher volume. The nutrient content of food from local farms is higher than food from industrial farms. Overall, food from local sources is beneficial for everyone, your family most of all.