Local Food Movement - We’ve Come Far to Get This Close

We’ve Come Far to Get This Close

Walking past the tables of fresh produce in the middle of Bruin Plaza, memories of home and visiting the local farmers’ market with my mom washed over me. UCLA was rather clever—setting up a farmers’ market at a location that nearly all students had to pass through made it incredibly convenient for students to connect with local farmers and build healthy habits. USAC’s 2010 campaign to bring a farmers’ market to campus succeeded, and since April 2012, E3—the largest environmental organization at UCLA—has managed UCLA’s farmers’ market with the help of SWC, TGIF, and ASUCLA. Always having been an environmentalist, I found UCLA’s farmers’ market to be a suitable piece of evidence that others are realizing the environmental and economic benefits of buying local.

Although the Local Food Movement experienced a slow start, it has made considerable progress in the past few decades. As some background, the government created programs to assure farmers that they would not go out of business when agriculture started deteriorating in the Great Depression. However, since their solution involved narrow profit margins, farmers searched for alternative tactics to increase crop yields, including exploiting workers and spraying tons of toxic pesticides. In addition, small farms went bankrupt and were bought by large corporate farms. Thus, people started to take their health into their own hands and started the Local Food Movement. Once they realized how large agribusinesses prioritized profits over health, backing for local farms flourished. With its unified members’ support, the movement has caused a resurgence of small scale farms and, illustrated by UCLA’s farmers’ market, anticipates a thriving future as it exposes younger generations to its cause.

The main goal of the Local Food Movement has been to literally and spiritually bring buyers and growers closer together, which has largely been achieved through farmers’ markets—seen by UCLA students buying from the farmers themselves. It also hopes to promote fair food production processes, stimulate the local economy, and endorse healthy eating habits. Although there is no consensus for what “local” is defined as, people generally consider “local food” to be grown within 100 to 400 miles of where it is sold, or at least grown in the same state. The movement serves small farms, protecting them from being exploited by wholesalers. It also serves everyone who consumes food by supporting sustainable agriculture practices that produce more nutritious foods and a healthier environment.

The Local Food Movement has been promoting its cause through a variety of campaigns and direct action. The key points that the campaigns stress are that buying from local producers means fresher and more nutritious food, being more educated about how the food is grown, stimulating the local economy, and encouraging sustainable and fair practices. Buying local implies that the distance and time between where the food was harvested and sold is significantly shorter than imported foods, so crops are picked at their peak freshness and don’t require chemical preservatives. The strawberries at the UCLA farmers’ market traveled less than an hour and a half from Alaya’s Farms in Oxnard, for instance, and were sold almost immediately after being picked. Also, buyers can talk to the farmers who grew their food directly, so they can learn about how their food is grown and purchase from those using fair practices. At UCLA, students are generally more conscious about sustainability and their individual impacts on the earth, so it is not uncommon to see them converse with the farmers about their growing practices. This instinctive curiosity in college students fosters deeper connections to the movement and fuels the motivation to care for the health of the environment and community.

These farmers’ markets not only promote the cause of the Local Food Movement by introducing new, and potentially young buyers to local farmers, but they also embody the movement. When people shop at farmers’ markets, the goal of taking out the middlemen is achieved. Between 1994 and 2014, the number of farmers’ markets jumped from less than 2,000 to over 8,000, signaling an outcome of the movement’s recent progress. Another result is a widening range of members illustrated by farmers’ markets existing in university campuses.

However, this support from newer generations relied heavily on the actions of older generations.