Vote, vote often for your favorite (Editorial)

“Eat Fresh, Buy Local.” ... Or is it “Buy Local, Eat Fresh?”
Either way, the message is clear.
It’s been a summer of celebration of farmers’ markets.
We’ve had a National Farmers’ Market Week, and we’ve had state secretaries of agriculture showing up at farm markets across their states, hawking the produce and spreading the word.
Indeed, even Kathleen Merrigan, deputy USDA secretary, visited Maryland to laud a Talbot County firm marketing value-added Eastern Shore goodies, to visit a farm family, whose operation includes a handsome market, and to share a Maryland-food-only picnic with the governor before heading back to D.C.
The celebration also has provided American Farmland Trust the opportunity to tout the social, cultural and, of course, the culinary benefits of visiting your local farmers’ market.
It is doing so with its “America’s Favorite Farmers’ Markets” contest.
The contest is designed to raise national awareness about the importance of supporting fresh food from local farms and farmers. Market shoppers are voting — on line — to support their favorite farmers’ markets.
The “polls” opened on June 1 and will close at midnight on Aug. 31.
Consumers may vote for as many participating farmers markets as they choose, but may only vote once for each market.
The contest divides the nation’s markets into four categories: Boutique (15 or fewer vendors), Small (16 to 30 vendors), Medium (31 to 55 vendors) and Large (56-plus vendors.
At the end of the contest, one small, medium, large and boutique market will win the title of “America’s Favorite Farmers’ Market” for 2010.
The reward for the winning market in each category will be a shipment of “No Farms No Food” tote bags, along with other prizes including free printing services from http://igreenprint and free graphic design services from Virginia based design firm, SQN Communications.
As of July 5, farmers’ markets in the five states of the Mid-Atlantic – Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia — had claimed nine positions in the top 20 in the boutique, small and medium divisions and one top 20 in the large category.
The King George Farmers’ Market in King George, Va., was No. 1 in the boutique category and the Historic Lewis Farmers’ Market in Lewes, Del., claimed a second spot in the medium division.
The Top 20 list is tracked on an up-to-the-minute basis and you can view it at www.farmland.org/vote.
But the contest, it must be remembered, is simply a means to an end.
That end is to help connect consumers to the farms and farmland which provide their food and convince them that farmers and farmland are worth protecting.
America has been losing more than an acre of farmland every minute to some kind of development. That is an astonishing figure.
Keeping farms viable by providing them with an additional and close-by venue to sell their crops and their produce is one of the best ways to save the farmland that sustains us all.
So buy local and eat fresh.
It will sustain your body as it will the farmland from which it emerges.