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Defining ‘Local’
We all know we should buy local, but what does that mean?

By Casey Morgan

 
Think about what you ate for breakfast. How far did it travel to get on your plate? If you aren’t sure, join the club. It’s difficult for consumers to know the source of every ingredient they eat. Depending on the month, those strawberries could have come from California or your local patch. The bacon: a nearby farm, maybe — this is the Midwest, after all. And those Cheerios: Who knows?

Thanks to the locavore movement, more people are curious about sourcing their food. Many farmers’ markets, supermarkets and restaurants are capitalizing on local everything by marketing local products to customers. But Farmer John’s definition of local is different than Wal-Mart’s. As a result, it’s hard to tell how local that granola bar really is.

Wal-Mart’s official definition of local is any product grown or produced within the given store’s state. So, lemons grown in San Diego can be sold and marketed as “local” 500 miles north in Sacramento. Hy-Vee, an employee-owned supermarket with stores in eight Midwestern states, shares Wal-Mart’s in-state philosophy. Even Gateway Market, a locally owned specialty foods market in Des Moines, abides by the in-state policy.

“We consider anything from Iowa to be local,” said Dave de Haan, Gateway’s produce manager.

For Suman Hoque, owner of HoQ, a farm-to-table restaurant in downtown Des Moines, that definition of local isn’t good enough. Nearly 100 percent of his food, except fish, is locally sourced from Des Moines and the surrounding area.

“I like to know who is growing my food,” Hoque said. “All our food comes from within 50 miles of here, so anything in that 50-mile radius would be local.”

Larry Cleverley, owner and operator of Cleverley Farms, an organic farm in Mingo, Iowa, has a broader definition for local.

“To me, eating local food from 100 miles away is a good rule of thumb,” Cleverley said. “But I don’t think there’s any hard, fast answer.”

Cleverley’s right. The bedrock crux of the issue is that there’s no clear legal definition of “local.” It’s a subjective term in the agriculture industry. Even the United States Department of Agriculture hasn’t defined it. According to a report from the USDA, “There is no consensus on a definition of ‘local’ or ‘local food systems’ systems in terms of the geographic distance between production and consumption.”

“So even within the USDA, it’s not a clearly defined term,” said Matt Russell, food policy project coordinator at Drake University. “It becomes difficult for eaters to differentiate between Hy-Vee’s definition versus the USDA’s definition versus Wal-Mart’s definition.”

This vacuum lends to the confusion consumers face when deciphering what local actually means. It’s a void that can be exploited by not-so-local corporations aiming to profit off the buzzword’s ambiguity. Frito-Lay attempted to market its potato chips as local in Texas because the potatoes were grown and processed there, but consumers didn’t bite.

“So it’s local, right? No, it’s not. And nobody bought that,” Russell said.

Distance issues notwithstanding, simply knowing the source of food can be beneficial to consumers, farmers and the local economy, Cleverley said. It’s a win-win-win.

“Local food is going to be fresher, and it’s going to have a much better shelf life. And if it’s fresher, it’s going to have better flavor,” Cleverley said.

Purchasing local food bolsters the local economy. Economists call it the local multiplier effect, or the local premium. It’s the idea that dollars spent in local establishments will recirculate in the local economy at a higher rate than money spent in chain stores in the same area.

A Civic Economics study reported 34.5 percent of revenue from chain restaurants found its way back to the local economy, compared to 65.4 percent of dollars spent in independent restaurants.

“One of the biggest advantages of buying local is its impact on the local economy. I read that for every dollar you spend in the local economy, it will multiply sevenfold as it changes hands,” Cleverley said. “That’s a huge benefit.”

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Photo courtesy of Jewell Willett

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