Blogs
Blog 2- Breaking down the barriers to local food
When my school (MSS) and LoEllen visited The Burt Farm, we were shocked to learn that there were laws and barriers in place preventing us from having our school cafeteria hire local farmers as our suppliers. Some of the barriers had good intentions, like making sure our school buys from suppliers they trust, but others had to do with things like money. Buying mass produced food is cheaper for companies to purchase, and buying more of it only makes things cheaper due to supply and demand. Here on the Island, we don't have many agricultural inspectors, and that makes it very difficult for local farmers to get the certifications they need to sell to us. My class agrees that we should appeal to the Provençal government and ask them to make it easier for farmers to get certified. We aren't asking for our safety to be compromised- we want to get more certifiers to come to our area and more often. We want to encourage our farmers to produce more, and in doing so it would lower the price of fresh goods and create demand. Max Burt also told us that there was a cap on how much he can produce- and we don't think that's fair either. We think that fair, free range farms shouldn't have limits smaller than factory farms.
