Caption: Wheatsfield Cooperative Grocery in Ames, Iowa, makes an effort to purchase food grown by local farmers in addition to their other products. The store chooses to support farmers whose land stewardship and farming practices align with their vision of sustai, Credit: Kathleen Masterson / Harvest Public Media
Image by: Kathleen Masterson / Harvest Public Media 
Wheatsfield Cooperative Grocery in Ames, Iowa, makes an effort to purchase food grown by local farmers in addition to their other products. The store chooses to support farmers whose land stewardship and farming practices align with their vision of sustai 

Part One: Assessing food miles, carbon footprints

Series: Home Fields
From: Harvest Public Media Group
Length: 00:04:05

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Does buying that tomato from your local farmer vs. one that traveled 1,500 miles from Mexico make a big difference in terms of its environmental impact? Not necessarily. Read the full description.
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Part One: Assessing food miles, carbon footprints
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Harvest Public Media Group

Mondaypage_small Does buying that tomato from your local farmer vs. one that traveled 1,500 miles from Mexico make a big difference in terms of its environmental impact? Not necessarily.

Part One: Assessing food miles, carbon footprints | 00:04:05

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Caption: Ryan Jepsen and his wife started Grass Run Farms in 2006 to sell grass fed beef and hogs. With more demand than they could meet, they began buying from other farmers, and found themselves stepping into the role of local foods middlemen., Credit: Kathleen Masterson/Harvest Public Radio

Part Six: Local food ripe for a middleman (00:05:21)
From: Harvest Public Media Group

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Part Five: A cultural disconnect (00:05:39)
From: Harvest Public Media Group

I’m walking down 9th Street in downtown Columbia, Missouri. This is a thoroughfare for local eateries, shopping and business. It’s not uncommon to also see local farmers ...
Caption: "I will pay the higher price to get the local product,” says Kevin Shinn (left), who owns Bread & Cup, a restaurant in downtown Lincoln, Neb. He works with vendors at the farmers market to source local food., Credit: Clay Masters / Harvest Public Media

Part Four: Is it more expensive to buy local? (00:03:52)
From: Harvest Public Media Group

Would you pay more for local food? Or would you expect to pay less? In today's installment of our five part series on local food, Harvest Public Media’s Clay Masters reports ...
Caption: Mike Callicrate owns a feed yard in St. Francis, Kan. where the mobile meat processing unit currently resides. Owned by the Nebraska Environmental Action Coalition, the slaughter unit has been tested on Callicrate’s northwest Kansas property since last fa, Credit: Eric Durban / Harvest Public Media

Part Three: In rural areas, working with what you've got (00:04:45)
From: Harvest Public Media Group

Local food takes on a whole different meaning in the vast open spaces of rural Kansas. Harvest Public Media’s Eric Durban reports that supporting food production in the land ...
Caption: City Seeds Program Director Annie Mayrose sits cross-legged between curvy raised beds loaded with potato plants. The 2 ½ acre plot is a standout among burgeoning nationwide efforts to create local food systems that address social problems., Credit: Tim Lloyd / Harvest Public Media

Part Two: Social connections in the urban soil (00:04:50)
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As local food systems evolve, social service agencies are uncovering surprising community benefits in the trend ¬– particularly in some urban centers across the US. In parts ...
Caption: The Neill family – Julie, Callaway, Carter and Eric – all pitch in to keep the Neill and Sons Dairy humming. , Credit: Frank Morris/Harvest Public Media

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The number of very small farms and very large farms have increased dramatically in the last few years, U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics show, at the expense of ...
Caption: hris Boeckmann grows turkeys for Cargill on his Loose Creek, Mo., farm. But he also raises grass-fed all-natural beef for his private label. , Credit: Peggy Lowe/Harvest Public Media

Who are you calling a corporate farmer? (00:05:24)
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Agriculture is a big business fueled by big businesses. And although farmers themselves still come in many sizes, the distinction between corporate ownership and family ...
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The sustainable hand (00:04:37)
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It seems every farming operation today professes to be "sustainable." We may not know if that’s true until decades from now, but farmers' choices today well may provide a ...
Caption: Brent Ware, a member of the robotics team at Kansas State, stands next to a planting robot that won a national competition. , Credit: Jeremy Bernfeld/Harvest Public Media

Take me to your fields: Robots on the farm (00:05:30)
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With automation already popular on many farms, how far will technology go? Will the farmer of the future be a human farmer at all?
Piece image

Blending of cultures may be blueprint for growth (00:05:26)
From: Harvest Public Media Group

While some of the rural Midwest is hollowing out, regions like Sioux County, Iowa, are actually growing, thanks largely to immigrant populations moving in to take jobs that ...

Piece Description

Transcript

Our food system is increasingly globalized -- food that reaches your local grocery may have come from thousands of miles away. At the same time, the # of farmers markets in the US is skyrocketing. People are turning to local food for all sorts of reasons --freshness, social interactions, supporting the local economy -- and because it doesn't travel so far it's often viewed as a more environmentally friendly purchase. But as HPM's KM reports that's not necessarily the case. (30)

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Km hyvee: I’m standing here in grocery aisle in front of a wall of canned fruit, I'm going to pick up a can of these peaches.. It says they're distributed out of SF, but doesn't say where they're from … It's quite likely they've traveled thousands of miles to get here. But does that mean they used more energy --and producing them emitted more greenhouse gases -- than local peaches? Not necessarily....
Read the full transcript

Intro and Outro

INTRO:

Our food system is increasingly globalized -- food that reaches your local grocery may have come from thousands of miles away. At the same time, the # of farmers markets in the US is skyrocketing. People are turning to local food for all sorts of reasons --freshness, social interactions, supporting the local economy -- and because it doesn't travel so far it's often viewed as a more environmentally friendly purchase. But as HPM's KM reports that's not necessarily the case.

OUTRO:

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