Retailing professor's speech cites health, local economic stimulation
Assistant Retailing Professor Jeffrey Campbell addressed an audience of students and faculty Friday in the School of Public Health about what factors go into shipping locally produced foods.
The seminar, "Locally produced food purchasing through retail grocery channels: Customer and store environment attributes," was held by USC's Center for Research in Nutrition and Health Disparities. Their mission is to establish the university as a national leader in health disparities and nutrition locally, state-wide, nationally and globally.
Campbell focused on the reasons why people choose to buy local foods, or why they may choose not to. He also described the importance of local foods that students can learn in an informal environment.
"It's important for students to learn about topics important to health, and society in general," Campbell said.
Campbell said eating locally can be nutritionally beneficial, environmentally efficient, as well as benefitting to the economy. These three factors are something salubrious for students, and everyone, to know when choosing what to buy next time they're at the grocery store. "We all have different motivations to buy more local food," Campbell said.
Campbell said when you buy something local in South Carolina, you know you're benefitting the South Carolina economy. He classified local foods as a healthy alternative for consumers because they are always fresher than foods imported from farther away.
To increase student awareness of local foods, Campbell said accessibility is a decidedly important factor.
Louisa Houston Vann, a public health graduate student, said a good way to heighten students' visibility of local foods would be to have a farmer's market close to a familiar area, like the South Carolina State House.
"By having it in places where people can easily see it, it would become more part of their daily life," Vann said.
Campbell said there has been a great promotional increase of local foods among large factory retailers in the past decade. Popular retailers among college students, like Walmart and Target, have started putting larger investments into buying local foods.
Walmart recently invested $400 million to buy and sell more locally produced foods. But what is considered a local product varies among retailers and consumers.
"We see displays with local icons and pictures, but consumers still don't know the difference between local and organic," Campbell said.
In a customer survey performed by Campbell, he found that most consider local foods to be within a 50 mile radius. But according to large chain retailers such as Walmart, foods coming from places within 450 miles are considered local.
Thirty-three percent of subjects in Campbell's study believed if a food was organic, it also meant it was local.
Despite the multiple benefits of buying locally produced foods, Campbell said there are a number of influencing issues which sway consumers not to buy local. Price, display, customer service and a lack of promotional advertising are factors which can hinder people from buying local foods. Campbell said places like Kroger are trying to attract more customers to local foods by using enticements like rain showers on produce sections. He also said as more large chain retailers become involved in selling local foods, prices will begin to decrease.
Even with the increased enticements, Campbell found from his study that people are not buying local foods just because others think they should.
"As local foods become more mainstream, consumers no longer view it as a wild thing they need to take part in," Campbell said.
He contended that buying local foods is not just one-dimensionally beneficial. Campbell emphasized the importance for students to begin learning where their food comes from. He said farmers markets and Whole Foods Markets are a good way for students to take part in the food process.
"Farmers markets and grocery stores don't have to be mutually exclusive," Campbell said.
Students can go to the Healthy Carolina Farmer's Market on Greene Street to shop for locally grown foods, that are healthier and always fresh. A Whole Foods Market is also coming to Columbia in October 2012.
Alyssa Hand, a fourth-year public health student, said she attended the seminar as a requirement for her Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior class within the School of Public Health.
"Right now I usually buy the groceries that are the cheapest. But the seminar made me interested in buying more local foods when I'm on my own," Hand said.
Campbell's number one tip for students trying to get into the local food market is to start with small changes. He said once you begin to make healthier changes, you will soon be able to notice more dramatic impacts.
In order for local foods to become more openly accessible, Campbell said everyone has to come together to make a change. Local food producers, retailers and consumers all have to be connected for there to be progress.
"Local is continually growing," Campbell said. "We all have a stake in this."