Make Your Market A "Farmer's Market" Tristate Green
By: Web Producer
Updated: March 18, 2008
Take a look at whats on your dinner plate. Where the food came from and how far it had to travel to get to your plate could have a big impact on our environment. The ingredients for an average American meal typically travel between 15-hundred and 25-hundred miles. Thats a lot of fuel and refrigeration.
In a typical supermarket produce section you’ll find peppers from California, cranberries from Maine and a lot of stuff from overseas. When you stop and think about it, its a lot of frequent flier miles for your dinner salad. Thats why each summer one store switches suppliers and holds its own farmers market during the summer growing months.
The idea may be to meet customers expectations, but helping Mother Nature is a nice bonus. Anytime you can cut down on transportation costs youre going to have less fossil fuels used and that does have a benefit to the ecosystem. The store actually gets to know the people who grow the products and they come by and deliver it to the store.
More people are into organic gardening. To get started, consult the experts at your university extension center. Every state has a program thats called the master gardener program. For more information, log on to www.farmersmarket.com for a state by state listing of farmer’s markets in our area.
