In a report soon to be published, food expert Hugh Joseph discovers that eating local sustainable food only costs $10 more per month. He explains how to choose produce and items that won't dent the wallet or fatten the waistline.
When people first visit farmers markets, they might recoil at the prices. $4 for a handful of apples? $3 for a couple green peppers? The cost shock hits some customers first, and then they find out how fresh and tasty the produce can be.
But a food systems expert wants to debunk the myth that local food costs a lot more than grocery goods. Hugh Joseph, founder and director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, recently completed a preliminary study on food costs. He compared the U.S. government's
Thrifty Food Plan (which suggests the least expensive food items to buy) to a tweaked version he and his researchers came up with to include local and sustainable food.
Joseph’s shopping tweak involved rearranging the government's plan. He removed soda pop, bottled water, white sugar, processed desserts and snacks, white bread, luncheon meats, TV dinners, frozen pizza, boxed cereals, unfairly traded coffee, frozen shrimp, farmed salmon and factory-farm meats off the shopping list.
Joseph strengthened the revamped list with tap water, homemade granola, seeds, nuts, beans and root vegetables.
The conclusion? It cost $152 a month for a frugal person to eat, according to the government’s Thrifty Food Plan. That same person could spend an extra $10.23 to eat local and sustainable meals.
It all comes down to the unnecessary expenditures some consumers make on their weekly grocery visits, says Joseph in an exclusive interview with DigitalJournal.com. His findings will likely be published soon in one of two academic journals: the
Journal of Agriculture and Human Values, or the
Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition.
"Local food is better for you and the environment, and there should be a premium on it," he states, confirming some worries that buying local might indeed cost more. Thing is, if consumers didn't spend cash on pointless extravagances, they could afford to buy those fresh carrots from a farmers market.
"People spend a fortune on wine and beer, but when it comes to vegetables, people treat them as commodities," Joseph says. "To many, a carrot is just a carrot."
Moving away from that close-minded way of thinking can help bring sustainable food to market and also improve the health of savvy Americans (or Canadians or Europeans). "We have to figure out where our priorities lie with food costs," he says, adding how grocery shoppers often look at short-term costs instead of long-term benefits. Yes, buying pop is cheap but how much sugar would a household consume with all the pop infiltrating the fridge?
As his $10-extra study found, buying local won't bruise the bank account, and progressive shoppers should avoid the convenience of buying prepared foods, Joseph suggests. "People create time by buying frozen dinners but all those unhealthy choices add up."
But how can people change their spending habits and move away from big-box grocery stores and into farmers markets? Joseph is hopeful the government can offer a $10 incentive in the future. "We already subsidize the industrial food system, so we can also try to add incentives for consumers to buy local sustainable food. Offering $10 credits to visitors to farmers markets then they could taste fresh and tasty fruits and vegetables."
To Joseph, the bottom line is getting people to be more aware of the health advantages of eating more fruits and veggies. It's an old refrain. But Joseph wants to stress that the visit to the local farmer is the best way to embrace the growing trend of local food, and it only costs an extra tenner.
Better yet, some people could grow their own produce in their backyard. You can only imagine the cost savings of that environmentally friendly idea.
