Living in a Hotbed of the Homegrown
By Nina Rao, quotes Mary Hendrickson

Springfield News-Leader

July 25, 2004

There are things that don't grow in the Ozarks, such as oranges and avocados.

But a new publication highlights the things that do: potatoes, tomatoes, okra, beef, pork, peaches, melons and blueberries, to name a few.

The University of Missouri Extension has published a guide to "Eating Locally in Areas Surrounding Springfield," which lists Ozarks orchards, farms and dairies. The guide is an effort to encourage people to support local agriculture and inform them of how much food is produced here.

"Most people's reaction is: 'Wow. There are this many choices? I didn't know,'" said Mary Hendrickson, associate director of the Community Food Systems & Sustainable Agriculture Program, the extension office that created the list.

Similar guides have been published for Kansas City and St. Louis, but the Ozarks offers a particularly varied array of goods. Hendrickson calls the area a "hotbed" of small agricultural operations.

For example, the guide lists that Nixa Hardware carries local honey, sorghum, milk, beef, jam, kettle corn, emu oil, pecans and pickles.

"You have a lot of customers who like the homegrown, home-produced items," said store manager Joe Glenn.

Nixa Hardware likes carrying the items not only because they draw in customers but also because the locally owned hardware store wants to support other local businesses, Glenn said. And the store regularly hears of other products it can add to its lineup.

This Ozarks variety means that buying locally may be even more economically beneficial here than in other areas, said Thomas Wyrick, a professor of economics at Southwest Missouri State University. Wyrick's statistics show that farming accounts for about 1 percent of the labor force nationally. Here, it accounts for 2 percent.

"This is a little bit bigger issue for us than it is for the rest of the nation," he said.

Another benefit of buying locally is that a dollar spent with a local farmer or store is more likely to be re-spent in the community, rather than being shipped off to a distant company headquarters, Wyrick explained.

On top of that, the farmer actually keeps more of that dollar than with commercially produced food. In 2000, for example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that only 23 cents of every $1 spent on food actually went to the farmer. The other 77 cents went to middlemen: the marketers, shippers and packers.

But consumers are typically hooked by local food's freshness and the possibility of meeting the producer, said Hendrickson.

"People are getting really choosy about their food. They want to ask a lot of questions," she said. "And that's why they like to buy from the farmer because the person who grew it can answer those questions."

Jenny Green is staking her business on people's interest in local foods.

She opened Greenbean's Market on South Lone Pine Avenue last month. Though the market is not yet included in the guide, Green plans to have it listed.

About 70 percent of her stock and of what she sells is local.

"The whole point of my business is supporting local people," she said. "And this place is local, too."