Local gardening and cross-country transportation of goods have their similarities and differences. I have looked upon the pro’s and con’s of each end of the spectrum. To my reasoning, local gardens have a large amount of pro’s compared to cross-country farming and overseas transportation of goods.
Let’s begin with the opposing side: large farms who ship crops across the country or even overseas. Well, as this may seem as a good and hearty thing for our economy and agricultural well-being, it’s not all that great. Larger farms are at higher risk to pests and insects, which results in the usage of pesticides and insecticides, which can be harming to consumers. Another great disadvantage is the usage of GMOs and hormones used to plump up quality and size, which isn’t always a good thing. GMOs are a great disadvantage to human health, as well as food and crop additives.
Local farming provide many more pro’s with fewer disadvantages. The only disadvantage found with local farming is longer labor hours. Local farming provides more job opportunities, healthier ingredients, no transportation fees, and more. Local farmers have more of an intimate relationship with the crops they grow. This can be appealing to certain consumers because the crops are taken care of individually and hands on.
The controversy of this topic relates enormously on the food industry. Managers, chefs, or whoever else may be in charge of the purchasing of a restaurant’s ingredients may prefer one farm over the other. Depending on what type of customers the restaurant receives, the purchaser will decide local or mass production fields. A small vegan restaurant may chose local, as where as a larger lower class restaurant may decide to make business with mass production fields.
