The News Tribune (Lite) - Buying local is healthier and helps the environment

TheNewsTribune.com
Section: Letters

Buying local is healthier and helps the environment

MARTHA DERR; Gig Harbor
With food prices rising, perhaps we should return to our roots and purchase food from within our local economy. That would improve our overall health and environment.

Consider the cow – which is meant to eat grass. Big industry has managed to fatten a cow faster by feeding it corn and lots of medicine, since a cow’s body doesn’t digest corn very well. That medicine gets into the public’s meat supply. Corn grown in the same fields year after year depletes the soil of nutrients, so the farmers apply chemical fertilizers.

Those fertilizers make their way into the nation’s water systems and end up fertilizing the algae in the Gulf of Mexico, depleting the oxygen supply for fish and creating a dead zone where no aquatic life can survive. Fisherman must go out hundreds of miles to find fish to support their livelihood. All so we can have cheap food.

Search the local market for food, and you’ll find farmers who raise cows the way their bodies are meant to be raised – on grass. Local food tastes better and is, in fact, healthier. And supporting the local economy improves the community.

Cows are one example. Produce and other meats are available locally, too. It takes a little searching, but it’s worth the look.