Some students choose to buy local produce, support local farmers

By Chris Li

<[email protected]>

After a Thanksgiving day spent with with relatives and preparing the dinner with family, junior Christen Helou will anxiously wait for the event that will top off the day: the food itself. Her holiday will comprise of activities that would seem normal for this American holiday.

On her table will be all the traditional Thanksgiving foods, with the asparagus on one side of the table and apple pie on the other, and the turkey sitting right in the middle of the table, Helou’s dinner appears to be the same as that of everybody else.

Yet there is one major, underlying difference between her dinner and the typical Thanksgiving feast. In fact, most of Helou’s Thanksgiving dinner is made up of food grown right here in Indiana.

“Quite a bit of our Thanksgiving dinner is made up of locally grown foods. It’s often a tradition for us to buy locally grown foods for this holiday,” she said. According to Helou, most of the fruits and vegetables for her dinner are local.

One place that Helou buys her local produce from is the Carmel Farmers Market. Over the past few years, she has found the market to be an excellent place to buy such foods and has been going nearly every week during the summer.

A specific factor in Helou’s decision of buying locally grown foods rather than grocery bought foods is the better quality of food grown in one’s own region. Ron Carter, president of the Carmel Farmers Market, said he believes in the high quality of locally grown foods.

“Generally, the quality of locally grown foods is of far higher quality. A lot of the food at Carmel Farmers Market has only been out of the ground for 12 hours at the most,” he said.

However, since the Carmel Farmers Market is open only until the middle of fall, Helou also tries to find other locations where she can continue her tradition of buying locally grown foods, such as from Broccoli Bill’s Fresh Produce Market.

“We’ve been going to Broccoli Bill’s for as long as I can remember. Basically, the store has all types of locally grown foods, from cantaloupes to potatoes and apples. Whatever food you want, you can find it there,” Helou said.

According to Melinda McIntyre, an employee at Broccoli Bill’s, the quality of local foods far surpasses that of grocery bought foods. “A number of our farmers have been working with us for the past 15 years, and we’ve always been able to guarantee high quality from the foods that they have been producing,” McIntyre said.

For this prominent reason, Helou said finds the aspect of buying local produce appealing. “I’ve always found that the food from Broccoli Bills, or rather locally grown food in general, is of much higher quality than the foods sold in other grocery stores,” she said.

However, customers also have to be willing to pay more for the higher quality of local produce.

McIntyre said, “The price is slightly higher, but it’s definitely worth it in terms of quality. When you go to other grocery stores, and compare locally grown foods to the food stacked there on the shelves, there’s an obvious size difference, there’s an obvious taste difference, there’s an obvious quality difference. It’s only a dollar or more so higher, but the quality is so much higher than the store-bought foods.”

For some, such as senior Divya Pathak, this slightly higher price difference is exactly what they are a little concerned about. Although Pathak has never bought local produce before, she says that the higher price may be too

high of a compensation the quality.

“The farmers aren’t producing in masses, so they would have to charge more for each unit item. For their relatively smaller pool of customers, the farmers would have to price their foods slightly higher,” Pathak said.

According to Carter, the higher prices come from a variety of factors. Although with locally grown foods the transportation cost is cut, the higher quality and the amount of produce that each farmer brings to the market is relatively small, so the farmer will be compelled to raise the price of his foods.

“The price ultimately depends on the vendors. They charge what they want and what the market will allow. Universally, the quality is better at the market, and most of the times that will raise the prices,” Carter said.

Besides the price and quality differences, the fact that people want to support and participate in the local economy also plays a large role in people’s decisions whether to buy local produce. “Generally, whenever you buy foods locally, it not only helps the local farmers, but it also gives you a sense of community involvement,” Helou said.

The desire to know where one’s food originates from is also an integral part of this decision. Especially now, more and more foods that Americans consume are either produced or shipped from foreign states and nations.

“People are paying more attention. First and foremost, they want to make sure they know where their food comes from. People are also starting to gain more interest and knowledge in grown foods, which contributes to the increases in the number of people who buy locally grown foods,” Carter said.

Jill Birk, family and consumer science teacher, said she also believes that there is a sense of patriotism involved in the buying of locally grown foods.

“Both the desire to help out local farmers and a sense of patriotism that knowing where your food comes from play into the decision to buy locally grown foods,” Birk said.

In accordance with these views, the number of customers who buy locally grown foods has been dramatically increasing over the past few years, according to Carter.

“More and more people are visiting farmers markets. The number of customers, compared to last year’s, is up 12.4 percent,” he said.

Helou, however, does find one fault with buying locally grown foods; they are not always available.

“Locally grown foods are not year round. Carmel Farmers Market had closed during the month of October, and Broccoli Bill’s is soon to shut down for the winter. Essentially, that’s the only con I can find about buying locally grown foods,” she said.

Although she does not buy local produce herself, Pathak said it may be an option in the future when she has developed her own source of income.

She said she is able to see why people buy locally grown foods. “For my family, we’ve just always gone to the grocery stores. It’s just a custom for us,” she said. However, I understand the fact that people want to support their local farmers, which helps them be more involved in the community.”