Giving Compass' Take:

• Food Tank highlights two organizations that are partnering to help bring locally-grown food to customers across North America year round in an effort to support the benefits of eating local. 

• How can donors help support organizations that encourage eating local?

• Learn how increased access to local produce leads to healthier lives. 

There are many benefits to eating local food—reduced carbon emissions from transport, more nutritious products picked closer to ripening, supporting local economies—but for a lot of people, local isn’t an option. There are many food swamps and food deserts throughout the United States that are in part a result of limited access to healthy, local food. Much of the time, food racks up quite a few miles on the foodometer before it reaches our plates.

Founded in 2016, Square Roots has developed scalable urban farming technology to achieve their mission of bringing local, real food to people in cities to empower the next generation of leaders in urban agriculture. Gordon Food Service is one of the leading food service providers with distribution operations spanning North America, along with 175 retail locations. This partnership will help enable Square Roots to develop new indoor farms near Gordon Food Service distribution centers and retail stores, which will make an assortment of high-quality, local produce available to Gordon Food Service customers.

Read the full article on eating locally in North American cities by Laura Schwebel at Food Tank.