Voting with Your Food Dollars

While shopping for groceries one late afternoon in August I came upon two types of apricots, one of my favorite summer fruits.  Neither option was organic but one was locally grown in upstate New York and the other came from Washington State.  The local option was more expensive and was only available in containers consisting of smaller apricots while the Washington State apricots were larger, less expensive and available by the piece.  I was faced with a conundrum of stretching our tight food budget by purchasing the Washington apricots that had been shipped across the country or spending more on the apricots grown on a local family farm.  Considering the nature of this blog the choice to support the local family farm may seem like a no brainer but spending more on apricots meant spending less on other foods or omitting something from my shopping list all together. 


After changing my mind several times, I finally decided on the local produce from the small family farm. Fortunately, the decision paid off as they were some of the best apricots that my family and I tasted this year.  In fact they were so good that my girls finished the entire container by breakfast the following morning.

The motivating factor in my decision to purchase the local fruit, despite the higher price tag, was the thought of where my food dollars were going, the type of world I want my daughters to grow up in, and the effect, although admittedly minor, my purchase would have on the perspective farmers and the market’s purchasing agents.  In the end, I felt that spending the extra money to support a local family farm was more valuable than the money I would save buying produce from an anonymous large scale farm on the other side of the continent.

Although I am sure that the impact of my individual purchase was minor, I was driven by the thought that my food dollars were my most effective method of voting for the type of agricultural system I want to support with my limited food budget.  So the next time you are faced with a similar decision consider the economic, environmental and political implications of the food choices that you make.  Do you want to continue to support an agricultural system that depends on artificial fertilizers and questionable treatment of livestock and the environment? Do you want to support any organic product regardless of the methods or manufacturer?  Who benefits from the purchasing decisions that you make?  Do the values and methods of the benefactors of your purchases coincide with your ideals?  Every food purchase we make sends a message, whether we realize it or not, to purchasing agents, farmers and food companies about the type of agricultural system we desire, not only for ourselves but for future generations of Americans.