Bob Lazaro
PEC Director of Communications
571.225.0198

For Immediate Release

2009 Buy Fresh Buy Local Guides Are On the Way

www.BuyLocalVirginia.org

The Piedmont Environmental Council's Buy Fresh Buy Local food guides are on their way to every home in Charlottesville, Albemarle and Greene. When PEC launched the first Charlottesville Area guide in 2007, it was the first Buy Fresh Buy Local guide in Virginia. Now, as the program enters its third year, there are five chapters throughout the state and PEC is sending local food guides to every home in its nine-county region-almost 250,000 homes. The new guides are expected to reach mailboxes in mid-May.

The local food guides are part of PEC's larger vision of keeping Virginia's Piedmont an agricultural region where small farms can thrive and where farmland is preserved for future generations

PEC produces Buy Fresh Buy Local guides for three regions-the Charlottesville Area, the Northern Piedmont and Loudoun County-and is a partner on the Northern Shenandoah Valley guide. Of the 73 Buy Fresh Buy Local chapters across America (which are coordinated by Food Routes) PEC is unique in distributing local food guides for free to every household in its area. As a result, the guides have been exceptionally effective. In a survey of producers listed in PEC's 2008 guides, 90% reported that their customers mentioned seeing them in the guide and over 50% said they have seen an increase in sales since being listed in the guide.

In spite of economic hard times, the local food movement is growing rapidly. In 2008, for the first time ever, the Charlottesville City Market sold over $1 million in local food, which is twice as much as it sold five years before. Also, in the last two years, four new farmers markets have opened and one market has expanded in Charlottesville and Albemarle.

The Virginia Cooperative Extension has found that if every household spends $10 per week of its food budget on locally-raised food, together, they will contribute nearly $30 million to the local economy in Charlottesville and Albemarle and $3.6 million to the local economy in Greene, every year.

Melissa Wiley, director of PEC's Buy Fresh Buy Local program says, "As the local food movement grows, it can help change the trend we are facing across Virginia that farmland is being lost. Statewide, between 2002 and 2007, 500,000 acres of farmland were lost. Buy Fresh Buy Local can improve the economic outlook for small farms, which ultimately preserves farmland and the potential for people to grow food here in the future."

Promoting local food complements PEC's other efforts to preserve rural land. Since 1972, PEC has led one of the most successful private land conservation movements in America. Now, approximately 307,500 acres of private land are protected in its nine county region-an acreage that is one and a half times the size of Shenandoah National Park. This includes 140,000 acres of prime and important agricultural soils. In Albemarle County, over 76,000 acres of land-16% of the county-are protected through private land conservation agreements. In Greene County, about 7,500 acres of private land are protected, which comprises 7.5% of the county.

Land conservation and Buy Fresh Buy Local are among a range of initiatives by PEC to help keep farming a viable way of life in Virginia's Piedmont:

• Last fall, PEC co-sponsored the "Exploring the Small Farm Dream" course for potential farm entrepreneurs
• This spring, PEC held a seminar on "Hosting the Small Farm Dream," focused on partnerships between landowners and farmers who need land to cultivate.
• PEC was a sponsor of the recent Virginia Agriculture and Food Entrepreneurship Program conference near Charlottesville.
• PEC just released the first Farmer-Chef Express, a directory to connect local farmers and chefs
• PEC provides almost 40 marketing partners with Buy Fresh Buy Local signs and graphics to promote locally grown food
• PEC maintains a statewide website, www.BuyLocalVirginia.org , where people can search listings from all Buy Fresh Buy Local guides in Virginia.