Eating local

We're eating lots of home-grown greens currently, with the excellent addition of frozen tomatoes and beans from last summer.  I'm fortunate to have a lovely source of local eggs via the CAFE (Clemson Area Food Network) -- the Baird Family Farm.

Their mixed eggs are lovely and delicious.  And I'm glad to be able to buy locally-raised goat meat from Billy's Boer Meat Goat Farm, too.

But an invitation to a discussion about growing food (I didn't manage to get to it) has me thinking a bit.  Yes, local is definitely good and we want to encourage small scale farmers and provide a market for them, and it MAY become more urgent as fuel costs rise, etc.

But, as a traveler, I also appreciate that small farmers in other parts of the world are sustained through the global trade in food.  I don't buy asparagus out of season from Mexico or Peru (big agriculture, I think) or tomatoes out of season either from any source, but why not support Mexican grown hot-house peppers (vs Holland or BC grown) or organic frozen veggies grown in Asia?

Small farmers everywhere need our support, to be sure.