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Why Local Food Matters: My Latest Naturally Awakenings Chicago Piece
- Bob Benenson
- 4 hours ago
- 1 min read
Marking National Farmers Market Week, Six Best Reasons for Choosing Local Food
Timed to the peak August growing season in the Chicago region — and to national Farmers Market Week, being celebrated this week — my latest contribution to Natural Awakenings Chicago magazine provides what I think are the six best reasons why local food matters.
I'm aware that many Local Food Forum readers could recite these reasons blindfolded, but hopefully there are insights that aren't everyday news. And if you're doing the Lord's work by recruiting friends and family to the better food movement, I hope you will share this piece.
An excerpt:
As many Natural Awakenings readers may have a “better-for-people-and-the-planet” mindset, I feel confident that many of us are quite familiar with our local food community. Perhaps we participate in it because we think it is more preferable than the conventional food system that has been dominant in the U.S. since the end of World War II.
Yet, even as consumer interest in locally produced food has been rising fast—as represented by the quadrupling of the number of farmers markets nationally since the beginning of this century—we are living in a time when generations of Americans have viewed supermarkets as the places where they are supposed to buy food, regardless of where in this nation (or world) it is produced.
So we are sharing what we think may be the six best reasons for choosing local food.
Click the button below to access the full article, and stay to scroll around the other great content in this issue of Natural Awakenings Chicago.