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By Jenny Abel
 You're no doubt already aware that driving your car less, drying clothes on a line instead of in a dryer, and replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent ones can help reduce the greenhouse gases that are released into the atmosphere, but do you know the impact your food buying decisions can have? According to the Sierra Club's The True Cost of Food campaign, the average meal travels 2,000 miles from farm to table. All the energy expended in harvesting, processing, packaging, storing, refrigerating, and transporting our food is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions.
Buying food that is produced locally not only reduces greenhouse gas emissions, but has many additional benefits. Shopping at farmers' markets, roadside stands, pick-your-own operations, and joining CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture programs) helps keep dollars in the local economy, allows you to learn more about where your food comes from and how it is produced, keeps small family farms in business, and provides a regular opportunity for a community gathering (in the case of farmers' markets). One farmer from Prince George's County in Maryland told me that if it weren't for the Arlington Farmers' Market his land would be covered with apartment buildings.
Also, farmers' markets sell a lot more than produce. Most feature breads and other baked goods, dairy products, meats, eggs, flowers, and often things like mushrooms, sorbet, handmade soap, and other surprising finds. To find a farmers' market in your area, visit: http://www.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/map.htm
Jenny Abel is a member of the Virginia Chapter Mt Vernon Group (MVG) Excom and serves as MVG Environmental Education Chair. Before coming to Virginia she helped start farmers' markets in three New York City neighborhoods and spent five years working on international sustainable agriculture projects in the U.S., Russia and West Africa.
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