Buy Local

Five great reasons to Buy Local Food

  1. Local food is fresh, tasty, and nutritious.

    When you buy locally you know you are buying the freshest possible food for yourself and your family. Greater freshness means less flavor and nutrition is lost in shipping produce to market. Local farmers can also grow those old-fashioned varieties of tomatoes or peaches, harvested just as they are bursting with juicy flavor, rather than resorting to varieties bred to withstand the rigors of long-distance trucking and storage. Locally processed food often sources from within our foodshed and captures the goodness of the raw products.

  2. It helps small family farms and processors stay in business

    Buying local makes good economic sense. When you buy from locally-based food businesses, that money stays in the local economy, helping to keep our region vibrant and strong. Keeping the money here means greater job security for everyone as the money circulates among our own communities instead of heading to the shareholders who have never even heard of the Kootenays!

  3. Local farms and food processors help preserve our rural areas for future generations

    Once lost to development agricultural land is generally lost forever, not only as a source of food, but also as a source of beauty. It is the beauty of the Kootenays that draws the artists, the tourists and those who wish to live in a resilient and healthy environment.

  4. Buying locally grown food supports ecological diversity

    Local farmers respond to consumer demand by growing a huge variety of plant species-some that might otherwise be ignored or even become extinct. By eating locally grown farm produce you will experience a world of taste, colour and texture!

  5. It provides long term security

    Having a robust local food economy helps to ensure that Central Kootenay residents will be less vulnerable to both price fluctuations and interruptions in the food supply due to political, environmental or other crises elsewhere in the world – or local highways shut down from avalanches or mud slides. Short supply chains foster food security and food sovereignty.