Chapter 18: What Do You Eat In January?

Three-quarters of the way through our locavore year, the process was becoming its own reward for us.

After 9 months of the Kingsolver family's resolution to only eat local began, an actual monetary value was emerging. They were able to calculate their earnings from their own animal and vegetable production and processing by assigning a price per pound to each vegetable, chicken, and turkey they'd raised and harvested on the basis of organic equivalents (mostly California imports) in their nearest retail outlet. That plus their value-added products (several hundred jars of tomato sauce and other preserved foods, plus their daughter's full-year egg contribution), was earning them $7,500 of annual income. (Ironically, this figure is also the median annual income of laborers who work in this country's fields and orchards.)

Further, their year of local was costing them well under 50 cents per meal. They were saving tons of money, which was confirmed by the grocery receipts saved from the year before they began eating locally.

Kingsolver also argues that if they had not been growing their own vegetables, they still would have saved a ton by shopping in their new fashion of starting always with the farmers' market and organizing meals from there. I know it's hard to believe when simply comparing the price of a locally grown tomato at the farmers' market to the price of a conventionally grown tomato at the grocery store, but the big savings come from a habit of organizing meals that don't include pricey processed additions.

Depending on your priorities, the value in shopping for food from your local farmer is greater than all the dollars saved. But rest assured...the dollars are saved.