Hi. My name is Emily Springfield, and I’m going to be writing to you from Eat Local Eat Natural.
Hi, Emily. So…who are you and why are you writing here?
Ah, thanks for asking. I was wondering how to begin. 
You may have heard some of the buzz lately about eating locally-produced foods. “Food miles,” “Think globally, act locally,” “small family farms,” “artisanal cheeses,” and “microbrews” have started cropping up in the news as well as at the farmer’s markets. If this movement toward “food from around here” is going mainstream, why am I writing about it?
Because I think it’s more than just buzz. I’ve been sourcing more and more of my diet from southeast Michigan in recent years, and I can tell you, it’s the best food I’ve ever eaten. I just had a meal of grass-fed porterhouse steak, sweet potatoes, and greens – all grown within 50 miles of my home in Ann Arbor, Michigan – and let me tell you: it was phenomenal. You just can’t beat the freshness of food that doesn’t have to survive a cross-country roadtrip.
Which brings up the petroleum angle. It’s hard not to notice that both gas and food are getting way more expensive these days. Did you know most of the increase in the cost of food is either directly or indirectly linked to the price of oil? We ship food an average of 1500 miles from farm to grocery store, and we also get most of the farm chemicals we use from oil, as well. So, if oil prices go up, so do food prices.
Now imagine if we took all that shipping and chemical fertilizer out of the picture. As oil prices continue to rise, local food will become more and more economical. That is, if there’s anything being produced in our area that we want to eat. If you live in the middle of Iowa corn country, that can be difficult because there’s so much corn, there isn’t anything else.
Michigan is different. We still have a pretty diverse base of small- to medium-sized farms. Many are going out of business, though – farming’s tough, especially when you aren’t sure where you can sell your products.
That’s where Eat Local Eat Natural comes in. They buy high-quality foods from farms in our region and distribute them to area restaurants. This means farmers know they have a steady market for their products, and restaurants have one-stop shopping for many of the ingredients they need for their menus. And you get really fresh food that’s grown without chemicals and all those “food miles.” In the near future, we also plan to open a café and market, so you can eat here or buy ingredients for your own homemade feasts.
In addition, ELEN seeks out farms where animals are treated humanely and live the way nature intended. Cows eat grass. Chickens scratch outdoors for bugs and seeds. The buffalo do, indeed, roam. The animals aren’t locked up or fed an artificial diet laced with antibiotics and growth hormones.
So stay tuned. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be telling you all about our farmers, our chefs, and the amazing foods they are bringing to you – farm-to-table with maximum quality and minimum petroleum in about 200 miles or less!
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