What are consumer preferences when it comes to local farming?

What are consumer preferences when it comes to local farming?

Within the past ten years, the demand for food has increased massively in the US, and with the demand to reduce carbon emissions, the growth of local farming has been quite substantial, growing 111% from 1994 to 2004 [Darby et al 2008]. Adams et al [2010], however, argues that there has been a consumer shift in preference from organic farming to local farming, which ultimately has implications for the environment and society.

An interesting point I believe to begin with is augmented by Darby, who raises the point - what do consumers define as local? The perception of locally grown foods is not quite well understood, and if the distance between production and the consumer is the predominant driving factor, then national firms have difficulty in regarding their produce as ‘local’, especially with many consumers being influenced by ‘anti-corporate’ images that locally produced foods show [Darby et al 2008].

Adams et al [2010] believes that consumers have turned to local food from organic food as a more holistic alternative, as he emphasises a point made by Iles [2005], where consumers are now actually more interested in knowing food miles instead of reading the organic labels, as a general consensus that organic farming has become somewhat industrialised, and this ‘turn’ apparently - according to Adams - began in the 1990s as a result of interesting results from surveys, with one including 9% of respondents saying that their concern for the environment was their primary reason for buying organic produce. This was exacerbated by results found by Wolf [1997], which suggested that consumers in California indicate that locally grown produce are an important part of their shopping at farmers’ markets, whereas organic produce was less desirable. But why? Wolfe’s study also found that consumers perceived local food as fresher, better quality and cheaper. This is reinforced by some statistics produced in an article published in the same year as Wolfe’s study, with Gallons et al [1997] finding that local food is very important (49%) or somewhat important (31.5%), whereas organic food was considered at 15% very important and 19.9% somewhat important.

All in all, what determines a consumer’s preference between the two depends on various drivers, such as concern about industrialisation of organic agriculture and how fresh particular produce are. But according to Adams et al [2010], whether or not a change from organic to local food preference will have an effect on broader aspects of the food system, but still it provokes some interesting thoughts about agriculture and how society bases itself on information - even if its an image on a product!