OPINION: Bringing Our Foods From Farms to Tables

Bringing Our Food From Farms to Tables

By: Amber Houston

After experiencing unfortunate events that have taken a toll on our environment, many of us find ourselves wondering exactly how we can personally contribute to helping the environment in our day-to-day lives. How can we as both a community and as individuals, reduce our carbon footprint? Let’s first break down what this is. Simply put, a carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide and other carbon compounds emitted because of the consumption of fossil fuels by either individuals and/or groups.

Georgia restaurants, particularly in the Savannah area have just the answer we need. Farm-to-table restaurants has been popular in Savannah since 2007 and continues to be a popular bandwagon joined by many today. Some of the restaurants associated include Local11ten located on 1110 Bull Street and The Fat Radish which can be found on the corner of MLK Jr Blvd. Farm-to-table restaurants has made it their mission to largely reduce their carbon footprints by cutting out chunks of travel time that it normally takes to get the food we eat to grocery stores, then to restaurants to cook it. 

Isera Gray, a Bulloch County native and former farmer shared why he believes in the system so strongly.

“This strategy is allowing people to get fresh produce rather than going to the grocery store and buying out of season foods that have been shipped from places that are sometimes outside of the U.S. It’s quicker and safer food.”

According to www.gogreen.org some of the most important key benefits the farm-to-table program offers to our environment is reduction of food miles, more accessibility, fresher produce, protection of local land and wildlife and support of the local workforce. This program is of special importance not only because of these key points, but we can also point out that by getting fresh foods at a lower mileage rate, we are also avoiding the chronic wasting of food that happens often in grocery stores. Produce does not have a long shelf life so it gets thrown away when not purchased within a certain allotted time frame.

Farms-to-tables is great because it has been helping each of us reduce our carbon footprints for over 10 years now while at the same time providing safer food and even providing work for local food businesses.