The Challenge of Eating Local

For ten days last September, Georgia celebrated Eat Local Week. Along with people from all over the United States, we were encouraged to carefully consider where our food comes from, choose local products, and, when possible grow and produce our own food.

Restaurants offered special menus of Georgia-grown food. Local businesses held workshops to teach folks everything from how to grow their own vegetables to how to make their own beer. Farmer's markets, bookstores, and many other local businesses held events to promote eating local. I made a special effort to buy Georgia grown produce when I shopped for my family.

There are many personal and community benefits to eating local. Buying food close to home supports the regional economy. And because the food doesn't have to be transported very far, eating local decreases our dependence on oil and reduces air and water pollution. That's better for everyone. More importantly, food arrives on our plates fresher and tastier.

Eating local requires access to a good farmer's market or well-tended garden, though one can make do with a well-stocked grocery store. But what if you don't have a grocery store in your neighborhood? Then the challenge is not just getting locally produced healthy and fresh food, but getting any healthy and fresh food. Many people face this challenge every day. It is the result of food redlining and it can be seen in Atlanta and in cities all over the United States.

Redlining creates "food deserts" or "grocery gaps" in which there are few or no supermarkets. If residents, often of low income, do not have a car then they may be forced to do their 'grocery' shopping at high priced convenience stores or corner markets with limited selections and often, quality. These stores generally stock canned or processed foods and the few perishable items available are often high priced and not very fresh. This has a direct effect on the health of the people who regularly shop there for food.

Some who live in grocery gaps may be able to get a ride with a friend or pay for transportation by cab or transit so that they can grocery shop. But costs associated with transportation increase the total amount spent on getting food. Those with their own transportation may have to drive a long distance to a grocery store, increasing pollution and negatively affecting the health of the region.

While growing up, I often watched my mother take a gallon of expired milk or a suspicious looking package of meat to show the manager of the grocery store in our working-class predominately black neighborhood in Little Rock. We shopped there for ourselves and for my grandmother who had no food markets anywhere near her home. Sometimes, we left our community for a trip across town to buy groceries. As a child, those long drives were exciting for me, but I remember wondering why certain items we needed weren't available in our neighborhood.