Find Local Food Sources

Look in the “Links” section of the sidebar, you can find an entry titled “Local Harvest Locator” which takes you to a website called Local Harvest. The site summarizes it’s mission as follows: “Local Harvest is America’s #1 organic and local food website. We maintain a definitive and reliable “living” public nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources. Our search engine helps people find products from family farms, local sources of sustainably grown food, and encourages them to establish direct contact with small farms in their local area. Our online store helps small farms develop markets for some of their products beyond their local area”. In addition, they address the benefits of buying locally produced food with this: “It is fresher than anything in the supermarket and that means it is tastier and more nutritious. It is also good for your local economy–buying directly from family farmers helps them stay in business”.

Another reason to bookmark the Local Harvest site is to use it when planning a business or vacation trip to find out where to get fresh, locally produced products when you are away from home. As the site also list restaurants that serve local organic food, this could be a great alternative to driving around looking for a place to eat. There also seems to be a large listing of products that fit the mission of the site that you can buy through their online store.

All in all this seems to be a great website. One thing I did notice when searching for businesses in our area is that only a few of the local producers and restaurants were listed on the site. Listing a farm, market, restaurant, food coop, or other food-related business is free, so I can’t imagine why any business that fits the model would not sign up. If you know of a business in your area that would benefit from being listed on the site, why not send them an email with a link to this post or the Local Harvest site.