What Grows in Our Own Backyard?

When you think about where your food comes from, you might picture a grocery store, but every food has a story that begins somewhere else. Some foods travel thousands of miles before they reach your plate. Others may have been grown just a few miles away!

South Florida has a special climate that allows farmers to grow foods that cannot easily be grown elsewhere in the United States. Our warm, subtropical weather is especially good for tropical fruits such as mangoes, avocados, papayas, bananas, guava, starfruit, lychee, passion fruit, dragon fruit, mamey, and jackfruit. Florida is one of the few places in the continental United States where many tropical fruits can be grown commercially.

South Florida farms also produce strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, sweet corn, beans, herbs, and other vegetables. Florida is also home to beekeepers who produce local honey. What is available changes with the seasons, just like animals and plants in nature!

🕵️ Become a Food Detective

The next time you are at the grocery store, look carefully at the label or sign on your food. You may see words such as:

"Grown in Florida"

This means the food itself was grown here. That's what you're looking for if you want to buy locally grown food.

"Product of USA"

This tells you the product comes from the United States, but it doesn't necessarily mean it came from Florida or even from a nearby state.

"Packed in Florida"

Be careful! This (or "Packaged in Miami") tells you where the food was put into a package, but nothing about where it was grown.

For example, imagine a can of tomatoes that says "Packed in Florida." The tomatoes might have been grown somewhere else and then shipped to Florida to be canned. The word Florida does not automatically mean the tomatoes were grown here.

The same thing can happen with frozen, canned, or prepared foods. Where a food is processed or packaged is not necessarily where its ingredients were grown.

For fresh fruits and vegetables, look for a country or state of origin on the sign, sticker, package, or display. Federal rules require many fresh fruits and vegetables sold in stores to identify their country of origin.

🌎 Grown Is Not the Same as Packed

GROWN: where the plant or animal produced the food
PROCESSED: where it was cooked, canned, frozen, dried, or otherwise changed
PACKED: where it was put into its container

Those can be three different places!

🐝 Why Buy Local?

Choosing locally grown food can help both people and nature.

🌱 It supports local farmers. Your money helps farms and agricultural businesses in your community stay in business.
🦋 It helps preserve farmland. When farms can make a living growing food, there is more reason to keep agricultural land from being turned into buildings and roads.
🚚 It can reduce transportation. Food grown nearby doesn't burn as much fuel to reach your grocery store.
🥭 It can mean fresher food. Local fruits and vegetables can sometimes be picked closer to when they are ready to eat.
🌦️ It connects us to nature. Eating local foods helps us notice the seasons. In South Florida, when is mango season? When is avocado season?
🌎 It makes us better environmental citizens. Champions for Nature think about the whole system, not just the food on our plate, but the farms, soil, water, pollinators, wildlife, and people that make our food possible.

⭐ Your Challenge

Next time you go to the grocery store or farmer's market, pick three foods and investigate:

Where was it grown?
What Florida-grown foods are available now?

Being a Champion for Nature means remembering that every bite of food connects us to the natural world.