The Co-op Food Stores of New Hampshire and Vermont

A concerned member asks a great question about local agriculture. Specifically, the member sent us an email asking why the Co-op chooses to focus so much on the local community and local agriculture when food grown far away can actually be less resource-intensive, especially for crops not well-suited for New Hampshire.

“I understand that the local focus has been a part of the Co-op’s mission since its founding,” the member wrote to us, “but every part of our lives and the economy has globalized tremendously in the last 75 years. Why does the Co-op still believe that local is always better?”

It’s an excellent question deserving of a thorough answer, which Education and Member Services Director Rosemary Fifield provided below!

A Question of Local

by Rosemary Fifield

Thank you very much for your thought-provoking question. I plan to address this in a future issue of the Co-op News and hope that I can share your email as the introduction to this topic.

The question you pose is the topic of a great book that we have used in a book discussion group with members: Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly by James E. McWilliams.

I agree with much of what you say here, which is why I have promoted discussion groups about McWilliams’ book. However, I don’t believe we have an either/or situation at the Co-op. By necessity, we must rely on global sources of food we cannot raise here, either seasonally or year-round. We cannot feed our local population with the volume or variety of food grown here. But when a local source is available, we will favor it for several reasons.

Developing local agriculture contributes to food security for our region, something we need to consider as we look at any number of events and/or conditions that could threaten the transportation and availability of food from a distance. We cannot afford to be totally dependent on food from outside our region. We need to encourage more agriculture, more diversified agriculture, and more sustainable agriculture in our region (e.g. the use of biomass grown here), and to do that, the farmers need a guaranteed market.

Unlike corporations, the vast majority of a co-op’s stakeholders live locally, and returning value to the communities in which we live and work is part of our identity as a co-op. Money paid to our local farmers, producers, and business owners is multiplied several times over within our community, which I realize is not news to you as a professor of finance. It is, however, for us an important concept — supporting our neighbors, friends, family, and our local economy.

Keeping local farms in business keeps rural land open, one of the factors critical to an economy largely dependent upon tourism.

Local agriculture gives us a “say” in how our food is raised, grown, harvested, etc. I can talk to a local farmer about their stewardship of the land, their use of pesticides, what type of practices they have regarding animal welfare, and so on. I can’t have that conversation with, nor can I have much influence on, farmers outside of my region.

Local farmers tend to be small or medium-sized, meaning they tend to raise diverse crops, be more biodynamic in their approach, are less likely to monocrop. They are the antithesis of industrialized agriculture that is destroying agricultural land everywhere.

I agree that food grown far away can be less resource-intensive, and that transporting large amounts of food at once is more sustainable than lots of local farmers driving to our stores or to farmers markets, and lots of consumers traveling to farm stands, farmers markets and then to the stores, as well.

I also agree with the concept of empowering communities elsewhere, and I believe we do that every day because of the diverse product selection we have and our emphasis on fair trade.

At the same time, I think it is important to NOT support industrial agriculture ventures that take advantage of populations in other countries, reducing their ability to feed themselves because they are busy feeding us. The development of genetically modified “Golden Rice” to bring beta carotene into the diets of people in countries where they no longer eat their native greens because they’ve turned their land into production fields for global trade is a sad commentary on our effect on the rest of the world as consumers. I wrote recently in the Co-op News about industrial cultivation of asparagus on arid land in Peru that is depleting the water available to the native population for their daily needs. With that in mind, why wouldn’t we encourage people to buy asparagus that is raised locally?

I hope this gives you some insights into our thoughts on this topic.

Thank you again for sending this and for being an avid reader of the Co-op News!