Taking a bite out of the industrial food machine

Salt shakers
January 2004

Taking a bite out of the industrial food machine
Looking for something more than the tired, industrial-model produce you're finding at your local supermarket? Do you want to buy fresh, locally grown, organic food as part of a sustainable cycle of food production and consumption but don't know where to find it?

Then let your fingers do the seeking and the shopping via the internet with a neat website that connects ethical shoppers with sustainable agriculture and organic alternatives in their communities and across the nation.

LocalHarvest maintains a definitive and reliable public nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, organic restaurants, and other local alternative food sources. Its comprehensive search engine helps people find local sources of sustainably grown food and encourages them to establish direct contact with family farms in their local area.

According to the site's producers, "The richness, variety, and flavor of our communities, food systems, and diets is in jeopardy. The quest for economic efficiency has brought us low prices and convenience through mega-supermarkets, agribusiness and factory farms, while taking away many other essential aspects of our food lives, like our personal relation with our food and with the people who produce it.

"More and more people (we try to avoid using the word 'consumers' in this Web site) are realizing this and actively working to turn the tide and to preserve a food industry based on family-owned, small scale businesses. They are our best guarantee against a world of styrofoam-like long-shelf-life tomatoes and diets dictated from corporate boardrooms."

One of the site's services, "The LocalHarvest map," makes it easy to find family farms, farmers' markets, and other sources of sustainably grown food in communities all over the country, and if you're a farmer, market manager, or run a locally-grown-food related business, you can add your listing LocalHarvest's directory free of charge.

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