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You Eat Food that is Fresher and More Nutritious
Most top chefs choose locally grown organic food when it is available because of its superior quality. Reducing the time from farm to table ensures that food flavors are at their peak. Some studies have shown that organic food contains higher levels of vitamin and beneficial nutrients, and others have shown that the nutrient levels of food are highest closer to the time they are picked.

You Support Family Farmers and the Regional Economy
Sustain’s FamilyFarmed.org project would like to see 25 to 30 percent of the organic food consumed in the Chicago area to be grown and processed in the region. If we can achieve this, hundreds of millions of dollars of food expenditures will be earned by local sustainable farmers and companies. This will help family farmers thrive and stimulate demand for supplies and services from other regional companies, thus contributing tremendously to regional economic development.

You Reduce Pollution
Organic production doesn’t allow the use of synthetic pesticides or nitrogen fertilizers, which can pollute the air, water and soil and threaten public health by contaminating groundwater and rives used for drinking. Growing more food locally also reduces the need for long distance trucking and minimizes the emissions of pollutants that dirty the air and cause global warming.

You Contribute to a Healthy Environment
The EPA says that agriculture is responsible for 70 percent of the pollution to the country's rivers and streams caused by chemicals, erosion, and animal waste runoff. Organic farming may be one of the last ways to keep both ecosystems and rural communities healthy and alive. Small-scale organic farmers preserve biodiversity by collecting seeds and growing heirloom varieties of plants; naturally enrich the soil with manure and compost; and rotate crops in the fields and plant cover crops to stop weeds, nutrient leaching, and erosion.