Is shipping food normal?

We’ve all heard it before. “Support your local farmer.” 

There’s a company called Nourish Food Club, they are a pasture-raising, grass-feeding regenerative farm. (fun fact, they played a major role in exposing Vital Farms’ eggs controversy) 

Nourish Food Club ships to all 50 states. On their instagram, I remember a comment someone left: “the problem is shipping, we need to buy local.”

It left me pondering for the entire day.

I mean we’re looking at what appears to be a contradiction aren’t we? If buying local is so good, is shipping food bad?

That is, is buying food from far away states a part of the problem?

First, let’s briefly examine the impact of buying local.

Local, by Feed The Land’s standards is any farm within a day's freight. That’s about a 500 mile radius of a given location. A farmer in a neighboring state can very well be your local farmer.

There are farmers in your state that are a google-search away and likely offer delivery based community-supported agriculture (CSA). That is, bulk purchases of their goods shipped right to your door.

The reason I find CSAs attractive is because of how it accomplishes the goal of a more robust local food system in one faithful transaction. 

When money is spent on a CSA it skirts past nefarious big companies and reroutes dollars to

In one fell swoop you accomplished all of this + support a more local economy, supporting the longevity and prosperity of your community. The theory goes: the most prosperous communities are those where we observe the dollar circulate the most before being exported out.

So, what happens when you purchase food from far away?

Not just any old food, but good food.

2 interesting things take place:

Point B, I believe, is what that Instagram commenter was getting at. I believe she meant to emphasize the importance of supporting a local economy. Let’s lay out some more reasoning:

First, let’s be real, long-gone are the days when everything we need could be purchased by a locally-ran business in our immediate surroundings. These old community-supported “local markets” have been replaced by Amazon and Walmart.

When you purchase food from far away, you still observe the 4 benefits listed above, so the question to ask is: is exporting money out of our community worth the trade-off of those 4 benefits?

I’d argue yes. That is, I support shipping food far away if it means you and your family get to enjoy peace of mind and better health.

In the 1850s, we observed the first time America began eating food not grown locally. A couple interesting things took place.

As America expanded and upended plains Indians of what is now Texas, the beef industry gained new opportunity.

Wild longhorn cattle were tamed for commercial use. Cattle were live-shipped on railroad systems out of the southern region and into urban, densely populated areas Chicago and New York. The meat was then slaughtered and sold in local markets.

We observed the first time in American history buyers didn’t actually know the person that grew their food.

In the 1870s, refrigeration was incorporated into commercial beef distribution and the market observed a boom of shipping fresh meat all over the country.

Times were different then, factory farming wasn’t a thing. We didn’t see factory farming explode until the mid 1900s.

Back in the 1850s all meat was pasture-raised, there was no other system. 

But here’s why shipping became a big deal:

New York stunk. Before refrigeration, the densely populated city’s meat handlers had to slaughter and sell meat within 48-72 hours.

Housewives would shop for meat daily as there was no way to store beef. This is also likely where we first observe the “marketization” of the word “fresh”-- that we now see on almost every package of meat in our grocery store.

Fresh back then was a vital term, it meant the meat wasn’t sitting around for days in warm weather.

Due to the extreme need for local butchering, there were up to 30 slaughter houses within a given 200 yard radius.

Slaughtering an animal is a visceral activity. It’s the business of blood.

Dead animals, blood, and waste riddled NYC and violated the nostrils of its residents.

In 1830, a European visitor observed the slaughterhouses “scattered over many populous districts of the city”... they filled the air with “the most noxious effluvia”.

It’s gotta be some stench to use the word “effluvia”.

Meat was local- great. But it was too local.

In 1880 a refrigerated car, that allowed meat to be shipped instead of the entire animal, made its breakthrough in the market. This gave NYC and other densely populated areas some relief as now animals could be slaughtered near where they were raised and “chilled meat” could be shipped out.

Many slaughterhouses were forced to close up shop as there was no longer a need to slaughter and sell on the spot. Chilled meat shipped from far away had arrived.

The chilled meat was much cheaper because it didn’t come with the cost of logistics of feeding and drinking a live steer as it shipped over miles, likely losing weight and sometimes dying.

The U.S. hadn’t looked back since.

At Feed The Land, our philosophy is one of farmer prosperity and buyer empowerment. If the farmer growing regeneratively is prospering, we see this as a net good. If the buyer has greater knowledge, agency and is empowered, this is also good.

Do I personally prefer hyper-local purchasing of food? Yes, yes and yes again. But we’ll have to observe the nuance here to be realistic. Shipping food is our norm. As long as I see farmer prosperity and buyer empowerment, I’m okay with that.

The perils of America’s food system is not to shadow the idea that our solutions are attainable. And we’re already solving it. If you’re reading this, you care about food and likely not only support your local farmer but have paid it forward. Thank you for contributing to Feed The Land🐔🌱