Take action
What You Can Do Right Now
Enjoy food fresh from the farm
Buy directly from family farmers, look for family-farm products and encourage your local grocery stores and restaurants to do the same. Or grow your own! To find local foods near you, visit Local Harvest and Sustainable Table.
Vote your values with your dollars (and fork!)
All of our consumption, savings and charity choices make a huge impact. The foods you and those around you choose to buy determines what kind of food system and impacts we get.
Also, learn more about the Oikocredit program, part of the PC(USA) Enough for Everyone global discipleship program. Also see the Social Investment Forum.
Eat a sustainable and whole-foods diet
Support farmers raising produce and animals sustainably and in the process eschew the factory-farming that contributes to air and water pollution as well as global warming. Learn more about organic foods at Organic Consumers Association. Find sustainably raised meat through the Eat Well Guide.
Support fair trade products and worker rights
Fair trade ensures farmers get a fair price. We can now buy fair trade coffee, tea, fruit and more, and bring fair trade into our local cafés and restaurants, hospitals and schools. Find out how you can get involved through the Presbyterian Coffee Project and PC(USA)'s Just Trade site. Wild Oats, named a model fair trade supermarket by Oxfam America, carries many Fair Trade products.
Transform the buying power of your congregation and community
We are all part of institutions — churches, hospitals, workplaces, schools, city councils — that we can encourage to make purchases based on shared values. Enough for Everyone provides great ways to do this. Also, find out more about bringing fresh, local and organic foods into your school or other institution, by visiting the Community Food Security Coalition.
Get a diverse media diet
Although six corporations control most of the major media, we can tap a vast, independent network for diverse information. See the Presbyterian News Service, Indymedia, Common Dreams and Free Press for noncorporate, independently produced news and to get involved in bringing media democracy to life.
Lead Just Eating sessions in your congregation or at your workplace
"Just Eating? Practicing Our Faith at the Table" is a seven-session curriculum that gives high schoolers, young adults and adults tools to help us ponder the wider impacts of what we eat.
Do More: Be an Active Food Shopper
Tell your grocer and local restaurants you want them to source their food from family farmers — and support those that do!
Food and Faith shoppers are people who care about how and where their food is produced and where it comes from. Food grown by local family farmers tastes better and is often fresher, less processed and healthier than food that is grown and processed by multinational corporations.
Food grown on conventional farms travels 1,500 miles on average to get to your dinner plate.
Typically there is no label to indicate whether the food was grown locally, across the country or even overseas. This same food is often genetically engineered, picked days in advance, treated with preservatives, processed or irradiated.
Buying locally grown food cuts transportation costs, which lessens environmental impact and reduces our dependence on imported oil. It is important to help local stores and restaurants understand that providing local, family-farmed food benefits the entire community. The more you ask for food from local family farms, the more likely it is that local businesses will meet your needs and support local farms.
Action ideas
Skip a beef meal
One cow can pass 75 to 100 pounds of manure a day!
The average American ate more than 68 pounds of beef in 2001. That's well over a pound a week. Maybe you're not the average eater, but chances are you're still chowing down a lot of beef. The problem is, every quarter-pounder has a lot more to it than just the meat you're eating. Cutting back on beef can make a big difference to the health of our environment. Visit the I Buy Different Web site to learn more.
Take action: Better "burgers" 
Download a printable "I Buy Different Chart"
Write a letter to your favorite restaurant or market manager
Dear Chef/Grocery Store Manager,
As a loyal patron of _________ (restaurant/market) and a Christian who cares about the food I eat, I would like to take a minute to ask you and your business to support the many local farmers of __________ (state/county/region).
Family farmers are rapidly being replaced by large industrial or "factory farms." Food from factory farms is often produced in ways that harm the environment, and is processed so that the nutritional value and freshness of the food is compromised. Also, farmworkers are underpaid and often exploited. In order to ensure that family farmers continue to produce the high-quality food that we all want they need the support of local businesses like yours.
This issue is particularly important to my family and me because: (personalize to add family history in farming, specific food/health concerns, faith values, economic concerns, etc.)
I hope that you will join the many other (chefs/retailers) across the country who have demonstrated a commitment to offering food from family farmers. Please inform me of any actions that you might take to address these concerns. Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
Your Name Download and Customize:
Learn more about sourcing local/sustainable food and farmers
- Beyond Organic: The Vision of Fairview Gardens
Produced by John DeGraaf (producer of Affluenza), this inspiring video tells the story of Fairview Gardens and its struggle to survive in the face of rapid suburban development. It draws a sharp contrast between community supported agriculture and conventional chemical farming. 33 minutes. Bullfrog Films, P.O. Box 149, Oley, PA 19547; 800-543-3764; Bullfrog Films.
- Eating Oil: Food supply in a changing climate
This book from the Alliance for Better Food and Farming
explains the impact of oil on the food supply and climate.
- Small Planet Institute: Food Democracy
- Chef's Collaborative
- GRACE Sustainable Table
- The Food Alliance
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