Cooperative food market coming to Manchester, NH

My wife bought $15 worth of organic red bell peppers at Stop & Shop earlier this week.

In case you're wondering, $15 will get you all of six - count 'em six - organic red bell peppers. That's a per pepper price of $2.50! And as I documented in a previous post, Stop & Shop is, if you can believe it, the cheapest place in town to buy organic food.

Clearly, buying organic food in Manchester, NH, is an expensive proposition. And forget about buying local food, as the Downtown Manchester Farmers Market has incredibly inconvenient hours, at least to those of us who work Thursday afternoons between the hours of 3 and 6:30.

Which is why I am excited to hear that the School of Community and Economic Development (CED) at Southern New Hampshire University is spear heading the creation of member-owned and operated cooperative food market here in Manchester, NH, that will provide, in the words of Veronica Kamerman, assistant to the CED dean, "access to good quality fresh organic food stuffs, by local growers and suppliers at prices that consumers can afford."

"People are becoming more and more conscious about what they're eating and buying in stores," she told me yesterday. "We think this has huge, huge potential."

And best of all, CED has the knowledge and capacity to pull this off.

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Eat locally, if you can

I like the idea of eating locally. Not only is the food fresher than I'd get in the supermarket, but the money I spend on such food stays in the local economy. Further, I like knowing exactly where my food comes from and that its carbon footprint is relatively small.

Apparently Gov. John Lynch feels the same way. He proclaimed Aug. 3-9, as New Hampshire Eat Local Week .

Here in Manchester, however, being a localvore isn't exactly easy.

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