In recent years, the local food movement has gained a lot of attention for its efforts to promote sustainability from direct-to-consumer sales. Through processing, distribution and consumption, the objective of any regional food network is to reduce the ecological footprint left by industrial agricultural practices, while supporting local producers who must be competitive within a more competitive economy. wide. While it has its challenges, buying locally grown food can help people make more informed purchases by developing relationships with farmers, particularly through community supported agriculture. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The local food movement has been pushed forward by a number of important people. Michael Pollan was probably the most influential, with The Ominvore's Dilemma in 2006 highlighting how people could eat locally without it being prohibitively expensive, and how little we knew about what we were eating. This followed Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, which in 2001 exposed some of the horrific practices associated with industrial agriculture. Animal, Vegetal, Miracle, published in 2007 by Barbara Kingsolver, helped bring the idea of ​​buying local to a wider audience, since she was already a popular novelist. This all followed the organic food movement, which had been developing for decades. The organic food movement had a lot in common with the local food movement, and people developed an attachment to the idea of ​​better food. But that was co-opted by industrial farming practices, and by the time national standards for organic foods were established in 2002, they weren't that different from industrial foods. Local is about more than how far the food travels. It’s just as much, if not more, about the means and methods used to grow that food. In some cases, Chilean tomatoes may have a lower carbon footprint than tomatoes available at the farmers market. But typically, they are grown in huge tomato fields cut from the rainforest, transported on roads that cut through once-healthy ecosystems, and produced by underpaid workers in almost indentured servitude. Locally sourced foods are often "synonymous with small farms engaged in social and economic relationships" (Martinez et al. 4) that reduce the use of products such as "synthetic chemicals and plant-based fertilizers." energy” and “limit chemical and pesticide residues on food”. “A food label is a tool that helps consumers discern the nutritional value of a given product. In 2016, a study carried out on the effectiveness of food labels in health prevention specified their purpose: “it reports the composition, the ingredients and their relative quantities, it provides information on the quality, origin, processing and conservation”. Because people often think of food labels in these terms, it is easy for them to believe the added nutrition claims on them. But most health claims on food labels are a marketing tool, with little evidence to support them. It is often highly processed foods with long ingredient lists that are labeled this way, depriving consumers of "theopportunity to consciously choose what to buy. The best way to make an informed decision about a food purchase is through direct contact. contact with the producer of this product; a local producer is observable. It is possible to enter their land, visit their fields and call them to find out how this year's harvest went. People can get to know the farmer who produces their food, because "the product reaches the consumer with integrated information, for example through package labeling or personal communication." If people know their farmer, the label doesn't matter. If they don't know their farmer, the label doesn't help them, but they can visit the farm or join a CSA, and thus discover a way to make a more conscious purchase. At any farmers market, there will be foods raised using a variety of growing methods: produce can be organic or pesticide-free, while animal products can be pasture-raised or cage-free. Just like in the supermarket, people need to make sure the food they buy meets their standards. Going to the farmer's market does not necessarily mean "best" and "local" only indicates a few properties of that food. There are organic produce from the supermarket and organic produce from the farmer's market; the idea is that if people abandon their dependence on single-word labels, they can create their own food consciousness, which is facilitated by direct contact with producers. Joining a CSA is the best way to source locally sourced food at a meaningful level and at a reasonable price. With a CSA, the consumer pays the farmer in advance for the entire season and each week the farmer makes a delivery of produce. Each week the farmer decides what to get and how much of each, based on what was harvested that week. The concept is that the consumer shares the risk with the farmer. Because the money is paid up front, it can be used for seeds and preparatory investments, unlike the conventional model which forces the farmer to go into debt and therefore risk financial ruin in the event of a bad year. In the event of a drought or other problem, consumers simply receive their share of the smaller reward. In a normal or good year, they tend to get an incredible amount of food. For low-income consumers, joining an ASC presents challenges. In 2017, an intervention trial examined the impact of community-supported agriculture on children's diets and found that low-income families were often deterred from participating due to "the upfront payment structure …”. For this reason, a case study was conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture on a business model that sought to better accommodate low-income CSA shareholders: “Farmer Dave's CSA is a program based in Boston, Massachusetts that strives to bring CSA actions to a higher level. residents of working-class neighborhoods. Through this program, low-income and marginalized people could become shareholders through a sliding scale model, "[where] partners help collect weekly stock payments and process EBT payments for programs like Snap that can be used to make weekly payments rather than just one. -temporal and seasonal payments”. Although this model is not widely implemented, it shows that initiatives are being taken to ensure an inclusive future of ASCs for low-income consumers...