In contrast to consumers' skepticism around organic food, people's attitude toward “local food” was on the whole very positive.  The tag cloud to the left shows the words consumers immediately thought of when given the phrase "locally frown food."

When forced to choose between local and organic when buying food, our participants overwhelmingly chose local. C11 said: “the source of the produce matters a whole lot more to me, if you're a farm in Petaluma and you're not organic, I don't care that much” and C5 said "the idea of local sometimes can trump the organic thing for me."

The reasons people gave around why they preferred to buy local food centered around supporting their community, supporting local economies, preserving the environment, quality, and health.

Many participants mentioned the importance of supporting local growers in order to strengthen their community, C6 directly stated that “local agriculture means healthier communities.” C9 said that eating locally was “part of this whole idea of community that you're participating in, either the world community or one that you're in every day” Others talked about having real feeling for the community of people that lived around them, and wanting to support these people. C7: “I care about caring about where you live and the people around you.”

Some people mentioned specifically that they wanted to support the economic system within their community. C4 said that when she buys locally, “money stays closer to me, and the money cycles closer to me,” which was important to her. C5 said that he liked "the idea that someone could make a living by doing this and that you would be supporting that by buying the food."

Another factor in consumers' decisions to buy locally stemmed from their desire to preserve the environment by reducing the number of miles their food traveled and using less fuel. C10 felt better about buying produce that he knew was delivered directly by the producer, and not shipped. C5 said that when it came to shipping food, "the order of magnitude has to make sense." He said that the solution was "not shipping bottles of water from Fiji when there's a stream by your house."

Health was also a factor in why consumers felt good about buying local food. C4 drew a direct connection between local food and her own health, saying “the closer it's grown to me, the better it is for me.” Others drew more indirect connections, such as C6, who talked about having many small farms in a close proximity meant that “healthy patterns of eating is more readily available.” C8 said that for her, eating locally was about “just trying to eat in a relatively healthy way…there’s definitely a big health component there.”

People also mentioned that they simply valued the quality of local food. To some, local food simply tasted better. C9 said: “I find that since moving to California it's way cooler to eat local because the food is so much tastier.” A few of our consumers even said that they bought most of their produce from farmers markets because they were so disappointed by the taste of produce in larger grocery stores. C6 even said “I will not eat a tomato out of season. It's not the same fruit.”