Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Farmers Markets in the US

A good source for farmers markets in the US is the USDA website, http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/. You can look up farmers markets in your local area.

Sunday, September 2, 2007

Creating Demand

One thing that we here repeatedly on our tours is how unique San Francisco is, with an incredible variety of local foods. This may sounds simplistic, however there are an surprisingly number of area in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere that have or can create the same demand for local foods. The more food stores hear demands for local foods, the more they carry them. If you are willing to vote with you feet, in other words shop at the stores that carry local foods and let the other stores know that you are doing that, the more the market will be created for local foods. It's easy for a store to deal with one distributor for everything, rather the dozens of farmers and local producers. The only incentive for them to deal with local producers is that consumers will not shop at their stores if they do not.