Why Expanding Access to Local Food is More Important than Ever

This week on the Local Food Report… LISTEN TO THE FULL REPORT

When people talk about reasons to buy local fruits and veggies, they often bring up flavor. A tomato from the grocery store doesn’t taste anything like a tomato fresh from the garden. But Francie Randolph of Sustainable Cape says there’s a big health difference, too.

"The thing about these fruits and vegetables and why local food is so important is that when you have really healthy soil, a regenerative soil that has a very rich microbiome, that microbiome helps the roots to take in nutrients and then those roots taking in more nutrients create a healthier, for instance, tomato."

Maybe this sounds like just a cute talking point. But soil scientists have actually studied the difference between fruits and vegetables produced on traditional versus industrial farms and the industrial crops have significantly lower levels of key nutrients. One study found that between 1950 when much more of our food was grown on small farms and 1999, a point at which most farms had become large and industrialized, the levels of nutrients like phosphorus, iron, calcium, riboflavin, and even protein in our food crops dropped in some cases by up to 38 percent. When Francie first learned this, it excited but also disturbed her because she saw a big difference in access for different socio-economic groups on the Outer Cape.

"We have two farmer in the school educators that go into schools and they teach weekly. And so we were in an initial class with a new school and our farmer educator was going over the rules and what will be growing and really kind of the excitement of it. And a first grader, so someone who's six or seven years old, raised her hand and she said, my family doesn't have money for food. Will I be able to eat out of this garden at the end?"

This experience stood in stark contrast to what Francie was noticing at local farmers markets.

"What we saw was when we started working with farmers markets is it was really just our summer community that was coming."

The people with means were buying the nutrient dense local tomatoes and some local families could afford only the ones grown far away on industrial farms.

"So those are two really different things and the inexpensive tomato should not be the thing that people get who don't have any money. We all should be having the same level of nutrient density in our food."

In response, Sustainable Cape reached out to the leaders of farmers markets all over Cape Cod.

"We started something called the Sustainable Cape Farmers Market Coalition. So we help all the farmers markets who want to be part of it, it's free, to run these programs where if you have a snap card or a WIC coupon or a senior discount coupon or you're a veteran or a kid in one of our programs, school gardening programs, you can come to the farmers market and receive free food."

This was part of a statewide effort called the Healthy Incentives Program, or HIP, which started in 2018.

"It was an incredibly successful program, so successful, in fact, that it kind of failed. It stripped the funding almost right away. And so what we’re really trying to do is create a long term sustainable program, the funding has gone up and down and up and down."

In an attempt to remedy that, Sustainable Cape has joined a group of local food supporters called the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative to lobby the Mass legislature this session for steady, increased funding for HIP — which they say is more important now than ever in the the face of federal funding cuts. The proposed budget includes $15 million for the Healthy Incentives Program, and supporters have filed an amendment asking to increase this to $25 million. This Friday is the deadline for representatives to sign on and debate begins in the House next Monday, April 28th.

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Here’s a link to learn more about varying nutrient density in fruits and vegetables.

Check out Sustainable Cape and the work they’re doing!

And you can learn more about the legislative priorities of the Massachusetts Food System Collaborative here.