Just imagine: you're wandering home from hours of being holed up in Berry Library eating nothing but crackers, candy and Red Bull. You come across a group of students giving out free food and -- get this -- it's not only free, but it's fresh.
You walk up to the table where they are offering chips and salsa, watermelon and roasted corn.
You ask for a slice of melon and take a bite. A juicy taste sensation explodes in your mouth, a freshness and texture that you vaguely remember from some childhood summer. Another bite, juice dribbles down your chin, you spit some seeds, you lick your lips, you smile. You're hooked.
"Where can I get more of this sweet nectar of the gods?" you ask.
Pricechopper? No way.
P & C? Not a chance.
The Co-op? Close, but not quite.
A local farm? Bingo.
The melons are from Hurricane Flats. The corn you try next -- sweet as candy, whether raw or roasted -- is from Edgewater Farm, just 15 miles down the road in Plainfield, N.H.
The salsa is homemade using ingredients from Edgewater and Luna Bleu Farm. Even the chips -- a packaged and processed food -- are from a Vermont-based company.
Vital Communities, a non-profit group in White River Junction, Vt., has recently received a grant from the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture and Education Program to coordinate a program in which local foods are to be served in the various Dartmouth dining halls. They're hoping that students get hooked on the incredible fresh tastes of the samples they have to offer, and they're also hoping you'll learn a bit more about the values of buying locally that go well beyond the palate.
Firstly, buying locally means saving energy. If you buy a gallon of cider from a local orchard instead of Florida orange juice, for example, you'll save a lot of water and a whole lot of oil; industrial orange groves guzzle both resources in the production of your juice, as does the factory that packages the juice and the trucks that bring the product across the country to your local grocery outlet.
Every food choice you make has an environmental price tag in terms of how much energy was used (and how many greenhouse gases were emitted) in bringing it to you. Buying locally minimizes that price tag.
Second of all, when you buy from your local farmers you are supporting a local economy and community. Chain-store economies like the ones that dominates the strip malls in West Lebanon -- Wal-Marts and McDonalds and their ilk -- drain money out of local economies. The profits from such chain stores go back to their companies' headquarters, which are invariably located somewhere else.
Here in the Upper Valley, supporting local economies means supporting the rural communities and culture that make this area unique, and much of that economy has its roots in agricultural tradition.
When you buy direct from a farmer at a local farmers' markets (there's one every Saturday in Norwich from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.), that farmer gets more money for his product than he would if he sold it through distributors, who would often take it to Boston and back before it ended up in an aisle of your grocery store.
A local farmer is also accountable to you for quality in terms of taste, not just shelf life and durability.
Finally, if we don't support local farms, those farms lose money and eventually shut down. The land they occupied is bought up for other purposes, usually involving buildings and pavement.
Overall, the loss of farmland contributes to a decrease in biodiversity and worsens the planet's already-serious global warming crisis.
Buying locally makes sense for a variety of reasons, whether your concerns are culinary, environmental, social or economic.
After you get a taste of what Upper Valley farms have to offer, you'll see why many students at Dartmouth are coming together to help the College support the community around us through food purchasing choices.
You might just want to get involved. Who knows, maybe next year your study-break snacks will be a little more local and a lot more fulfilling.
