Your choice and your buying power - it is much more impressive than you may think.

Most people do not realize the power that they have with just “buying what they buy”.

Consider that when you buy anything, it is like casting a vote.  Those votes have the amazing ability to alter what “sellers” do as they want to sell to as many people as they can, and make a profit.  That goes for anything, but my focus here is on just food.

We can make huge positive changes by buying more local.  In local shops and markets, like Quality Greens, we can find many layers to the benefits from buying local.  Here are just some…

SUPPORTING THE HEART OF OUR COMMUNITIES

First, when we support local, independent businesses, it helps our community.  The LOCOBC.CA website states these stats:

-Local business recirculate put to 4.6 times more revenue than multinationals, keeping 63% in BC compared to only 14% by multinationals.

-Independent businesses donate up to 24 times more per dollar of revenue to local charities and they produce up to 8.4 times more jobs per sq ft, compared to multinationals.

To put that into perspective, they state that just a 10% shift in BC consumer spending towards independent businesses would create 14,150 jobs AND keep 4.3 BILLION DOLLARS in the BC Economy.  

So, what if we purchased 10% more of our foods from local shops, farmers, etc.  What if that was more like 20% or more - what would that look like for our communities?  I’d say starting with just 10% is a great start!

SUPPORTING ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

Equally important is the impact we can make in small simple but long term changes to our environment.  Less shipping of food over many miles, is an obvious benefit.  However, local small scale farmers are often more sustainable and consider the environment and work within optimal farming practices which produce better results for animals and agriculture compared to mono-cropping and industrialized farms.

SUPPORTING YOUR OWN HEALTH 

By growing food and selling it within a short distance, allows produce to be picked at perfect ripeness as it does not have far to travel.  That proper ripening can increase the beneficial nutrient value of those whole foods.  Not to mention, how likely that fresh and incredible tasting produce that can’t be beat.  If it’s delicious, we are more likely to eat more, and when that comes to whole foods and plants, that is a great side benefit.

Have you been into local stores, like Quality Greens, lately?  If not, pop in, and really take a look to see and feel how it is quite different from a big box store.  To me, it feels more ma and pa and connected.  It feels good be there and to support that.

Food should feel like that.  Like you’d want to know that someone took care of those plants, and the earth, and animals.  When someone takes care of those things, they are literally taking care of us as a whole.  That they used the best processes possible, the most sustainable, and least harmful, so that we can carry on with feeding our families for many years to come, that is an important area to support.

Thank you to all of our local ethical produce growers and sellers!

Have a great week!

Lisa.