Buying local food reduces your carbon footprint because your food travels less miles from farm to table. But most local farmers are raising food in ways that conserve resources, reduce fossil fuel and chemical use, and practice agricultural methods that pull down and trap carbon from the atmosphere. Get to know your local farms, ask questions at the farm stand, farm market, or restaurants selling local food, and support local farms and their efforts for a healthier planet.

How to Buy Local

• Visit your local farmers market, farm stand, or farm-to-table restaurant
• Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). A CSA is a program in which people sign up to buy a share of the farm’s harvest over a specific period of time (often a basket of produce once a week during the harvest season) so that farmers may better plan for the season ahead.
• Get to know your farmers, the way they manage their land, and how far they travel to bring you fresh food.
• Regularly buy from local farms and farmers that practice the type of agricultural methods that we need for a more sustainable and resilient future.  
• Learn more about regenerative farming and how crops and livestock raised this way actually sequesters carbon. Buy food that supports this way of farming.

Meatless Monday is a global movement to encourage people to reduce their meat intake for the sake of their health and the planet’s health. Replace pork, beef, lamb, veal, venison, chicken, turkey, and fish with nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and protein-rich beans at least one day a week.

Be careful not to replace meat with highly processed foods that rely on the same monocrops and pollution-causing practices. Focus on plant-based eating and you can still have filling, healthy, delicious meals without such a large carbon foodprint.