While many of our participants valued local food and wanted more of a connection with farms and farmers around them, the majority didn't go out of their way to find this information, visit farms or to make sure the food they bought was local.

Though some even had dreams of living or working on a farm (i.e. C4: “I'm always teasing them that I'm going to move to the farm... I have romantic notions”), very few of our participants had actually visited a farm. Some had no idea where the farms were in their area. When asked if he knew of any farms in the Bay Area, C5 said "none that I could name, no." C2 said that not knowing where the local farms are makes her uncomfortable because she wants to buy from farmers near her, but she doesn't know, and there is a lack of clarity. C6 said that when it came to knowing where her food came from “I feel like I should but I don't.”

Additionally, some of our participants mentioned not having the time to research about what went into their food. C9 said that she probably spent about fifteen minutes a week learning about the story behind her food, or “the amount of time I'd [take to] read the [CSA] newsletter.” C2 said that while sometimes she searched for food events online, she didn't read up about farmers.* One participant (C11) said that he tended not to think about food when around a computer so he didn't do very much research around food.

Part of this hesitancy around our participants' attempting to learn more about local farms was the lack of easy ways to access this information. C8 said that he had a hard time deciding what to buy, because “for a lot of places there’s not really any more guidance than [stickers and labels] and I don’t know if I’m making informed choices.” C1 worked with a co-op, and talked about how, though they were committed to buying locally, it was difficult to find and connect with local producers. She wondered, "why isn't there a website that's a collective of all the smaller producers?" C6 also mentioned having a hard time finding information about farms, and said “I'm excited about having a centralized resource for food and farms.”

Although one of our consumers religiously read food packaging (C8), for the most part, our participants did not scrutinize packaging and instead relied on trusted retailers, including grocery stores and farmers markets to ensure the food they bought was local. C9 said that she liked shopping at the grocery store near her because they care about local food and “when you walk into the store and buy something you don't have to check.” Others acknowledged their assumptions about farmers market, but were uncomfortable about it, including C4, who said “I feel like anything that's at the farmers market is a local farm but that's not true.”