Growing Local

Eating local may seem as simple as buying fresh greens at the farmers market, but there’s a lot of theory to back up why these small acts add up to a resilient food community. Studying how and why the local food system is evolving gives organizations like ASAP concrete methods to test the most effective ways to create healthy food systems. ASAP’s Local Food Research Center collects and analyzes data to understand how the perceptions and attitudes of local farmers, food system buyers, and consumers are changing as the region’s food system grows and evolves. The research center surveys a wide range of people engaged in the local food system to find out why they eat local, the barriers they face, and how their experiences with local food and farms have changed over the years. The research center is engaged in many projects, including a multi-year survey of southern Appalachian farmers. Annual interviews with a core group of farmers track the economic, social, and environmental factors that play a role in loc