Buying Food Grown Locally Is Not Just About Supporting Our Farmers. It Is About Our National Security – For Now And For Future Generations

A Commentary by Doug Draper

Did you happen to take an evening walk this last week of September and see that big harvest moon up there in the sky?

Tereza Hozjan and her husband Joe manage 'Town & Country Farms' along Canboro Road in Pelham, Ontario - one of many venues in our greater Niagara region for locally grown food. Photo by Doug Draper

Wow, it was a wondrous sight, wasn’t it?  It was one that should remind us how fortunate we all are to live on the only planet we know of in the universe that supports life, and how fragile the life-support systems of our planet may be.

In that spirit and in what is left of the light of that harvest moon, let’s also remind ourselves that we are now living through what is possibly the most bountiful time of the harvest season in our greater Niagara region.

Let us ask ourselves how fragile our lives might be if we continue to lose what is left our local farmers and their growing lands – if we made ourselves dependent for something as vital to our survival as food to producers in other countries that may not always be so pleased to feed us. Let us ask ourselves where we would be if we lost the capacity to feed ourselves and found ourselves vulnerable to other nations that, for whatever reason, might grow hostile to us?

Why aren’t questions like that being asked by our federal and provincial and state governments when they talk about ‘homeland security’? Why aren’t they reminding us that the capacity to grow enough food to feed ourselves at home is as vital to our security and survival as spending billons of dollars buying new fighter jets or waging a war we may never “win” in Afghanistan?

Why aren’t our governments placing a priority on growing and purchasing locally grown food from what are left of our family farmers – as a matter of homeland security?

But then even if our governments fail to make buying food from our local producers a priority, we should. And we can through what is left of our power at the cash registers.

Those of us fortunate enough to live in a greater Niagara region that includes the municipalities in Niagara, Ontario and those in Erie and Niagara Counties, New York, are now three weeks away from Thanksgiving Day in Canada and nine away from Thanksgiving in the United States. And we have the power, should we choose to exercise it, to purchase our food at rural food stands and farmers’ markets across our greater region, at local, independently owned grocery stores like the time-honoured Pupo’s Super Market in Welland, Ontario, the Big Red Market in neighbouring Thorold and the Lexington Co-operative Market in the Elmwood Village area of Buffalo, and at all too few bigger chain grocers like Wegmans in western New York where (in the case of Wegmans) you can walk in and see write-ups and photos of local farmers, along with the food they grew on the  store’s shelves.

For those of you out there you may that buying food grown in China or South American or other countries where they operate sweat shops to grow, process and package the food is cheaper, think of how much it might cost us as a region if we no longer had the capacity to feed ourselves? Do we really want to depend on other parts of the world we have little or no control over to feed or starve us, if they like?

On the Ontario side of the greater Niagara region, a report was produced earlier this 2010 by the Niagara Community Observatory, a branch of Brock University, that offers more information on how you can purchase locally grown food and support our local food growers. That report is titled ‘Niagara Food: It’s Nutritious, Delicious, and Available But We’re Not Buying It… Why Not?’ and it can be visited by clicking on  www.brocku.ca/nco/ then clicking on policy briefs.

In western New York, start by visiting the wonderful Lexington Co-operative Market on Elmwood Avenue, the farmer’s market on Elmwood Avenue on Saturday mornings, and Wegmans, a larger food chain that goes above and beyond its peers in supporting local food growers.

If you wish to recommend more outlets in our greater Niagara area that go above and beyond others to offer locally grown food, please share them with our readers below in the comments section.

(Visit Niagara At Large at www.niagaraatlarge.com for more news and commentary on matters of interest and concern to our greater binational Niagara region.)