Empowering Consumers
In this world, to do good, we often have to sacrifice –deny yourself something, or swallow some bitter pill.
The good food movement is different. By doing something pleasurable (e.g. eating a delicious tomato from a local farmer) you end up doing a world of good. The sweet/tart tomato juice dripping from your chin is like a fat raindrop that falls into a still pond, sending out ever-widening rings, each another good thing.
Everybody has to eat, and you can do something great for the world while filling your belly! Three times a day you have the power to change the way food is grown.
Tremendous amounts of fossil fuels, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and fertilizers are used in industrial agriculture. All of these contribute to pollution, and many are implicated in cancers and other illnesses.
Unless consumers (that’s you!) change their buying habits, industrial food producers will continue to give eaters what they think they want – cheap, salty, sugary “foodstuffs.”
Exercise your power as a consumer and Vote With Your Fork! Where you choose to buy food has a huge effect on your world. Buying local, sustainably grown fruit, vegetables, milk, meat and grains is a vote for independent businesses, small farms and diverse landscapes.
(Buying conventionally grown, processed foods, on the other hand, is a vote for feedlots, homogenous fast food chains, and petroleum fueled industrial agriculture.) You can stop participating in a monocrop system that pollutes the environment, decimates rural communities, and abuses farm workers and animals –and instead participate in a biodiverse system that benefits air, soil, water, rural communities, workers and animals. And you can do it three times a day.
All you need to do is seek out local producers . . . find one here: Local Harvest
How a small group of people changed their community with the help of The Land Connection-
What's new in Central Illinois
EDIBLE ECONOMY PROJECT In the fertile soil and temperate climate of Central Illinois, we can grow hundreds of kinds of fruits and vegetables, along with staple grains and livestock for meat, eggs, and milk. Yet over 95% of the food we buy and eat is grown outside our community. The Edible Economy Project is working to change that. In partnership with local farmers, schools, businesses, and community members in a 32 Central Illinois counties, the Edible Economy Project is facilitating development of local food production, distribution, and processing facilities. Our goal is to foster a healthier, more self-sufficient community where more local money goes back into the local community.
