The Piedmont Environmental Council’s Buy Fresh Buy Local program helps consumers find local products while building relationships between growers, food artisans, farmers’ markets retailers, restaurants, and institutions.
We launched Virginia’s first Buy Fresh Buy Local campaign in 2006. Today you can find nine Buy Fresh Buy Local chapters throughout the state of Virginia. The Piedmont Environmental Council is the regional coordinator of three of those chapters—Northern Piedmont, Charlottesville Area, and Loudoun County—and is the state-wide coordinator for the BuyLocalVirginia.org website.
PEC creates food guides and marketing materials, conducts educational outreach, and helps to develop new market outlets for farmers by building networks of producers, business owners, community organizations and consumers that are dedicated to the local food movement.
Buy Fresh Buy Local supports local farms, retailers, restaurants and food businesses by promoting local farm and food products to consumers. Our program includes local food producers of all philosophies who are interested in connecting with local markets. Our buylocalpiedmont.org website and guides include farms that use conventional, alternative, traditional, chemical, and organic practices. We encourage consumers to ask their restaurants and grocers about their local purchasing habits and to get to know their farmers and the farming practices they use to produce the food you
The printed guides from our chapters collectively list over 580 local food producers and distributors are mailed to approximately 300,000 homes in our region!
THE GUIDES
Learn where to find and enjoy local foods in our popular Buy Fresh Buy Local guides (PDF’s linked to below). You may also want to visit our Buy Fresh Buy Local website or learn more about what PEC’s up to on the Farms & Food section of our website.
Charlottesville Area Guide
Learn more about the guide for Charlottesville and Albemarle, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa and Nelson Counties: View the 2021-2022 PDF >>
Northern Piedmont Guide
Learn more about the guide for Culpeper, Fauquier, Madison, Orange and Rappahannock Counties: View the 2021-2022 PDF >>
Loudoun Guide
Learn more about the guide for Loudoun County: View the 2021-2022 PDF >>
Website with interactive map
In 2020, PEC also relaunched a searchable Buy Fresh Buy Local website, at https://buylocalpiedmont.org, with an interactive map that makes it simple for consumers to find exactly what they need right where they want it.
Questions about the guides? Please contact Matt Coyle at mcoyle@pecva.org.