Savor rich, full flavored, freshly picked, nutritious food

Standard commercial food travels over 1500 miles to reach your store shelves, losing most of its nutritional value and flavor in transport. The average grocery store vegetable is a week old on arrival and often requires preservatives, ethylene gassing, irradiation, or a combination to ensure it remains edible.

Locally grown food, picked at the family farm, is immediately delivered to your family table where its taste and nutritional value are at their peak. Enjoy unique and flavorful heirloom varieties unavailable in mass-produced and shipped food.

Homegrown offers locally made healthy foods and you can find out exactly what the production practices were with each product. Our producers offer a wide variety of all natural meats — pastured chicken, grass fed and foraged beef. We feature Florida grown produce and a selection of processed foods like cheese, salsa, artisan breads, cookies, pickles and jellies made right here in Central Florida. Yes, we have eggs from free ranging chickens. These are the same delicious and local foods found in your grandmother’s traditional kitchen, once again available to the public direct from Florida farmers. Besides food, we have a wide variety of artisan soaps and body care products, cleaning supplies, and other locally made non-food items.

Ensure clean air, water, and the protection of rich traditional cultures

By reducing our carbon footprint, using renewable energy sources for transportation, limiting delivery miles, and promoting sustainable, ethical farming practices, we are ensuring the long-term preservation of our land and health of our communities. Our producers are good stewards of their land, using only sustainable and/or organic practices.

A tremendous amount of fossil fuel is used to transport foods long distances. Combustion of these fuels releases carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and other pollutants into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change, acid rain, smog and air pollution. The refrigeration required to keep fruits, vegetables, dairy products and meats from spoiling during the long transport also burns up excessive energy.

Food processors use a large amount of paper and plastic packaging to keep food fresh (or at least looking fresh) for a longer period of time. This packaging eventually becomes waste that is difficult if not impossible to reuse or recycle. The industrial farms on which these foods are often produced are also major sources of air and water pollution. Small, local farms tend to be run by farmers who live on their land and work hard to preserve it. Buying local means you can talk directly to the farmer growing your food and find out what they do and how they do it, encouraging them to be responsible stewards of a healthy planet.

We offer certified organic and all-natural products. Each producer details his or her production practices for the members, so you know exactly what you are buying. If we want a more sustainable agricultural system, then there must be a market for organic and natural products, and the Homegrown Local Food Cooperative offers that market to customers and producers.

Ensure a safe and secure food supply

The diversity of a local food system and the ability to know each producer?s practices ensures a safer supply of healthy food. Supporting local farmers and renewing rural small-scale agriculture helps guarantee a consistent flow of food to local communities year round. Most mass produced foods are heavily treated with chemicals, hormones, antibiotics and/or are genetically modified or engineered. Knowing the practices of the farmers you buy your food from ensures a healthy, reliable and safe food supply.

Build a self-sufficient, caring community

These days you ought to know the farmers who produce your food. Our online market pages introduce you to the family producing that particular product. Knowing those who grow your food, their practices, ethics and cultural heritage helps foster rich and lasting relationships and caring communities. Saving farmers is a prerequisite to saving diversity. Communities that save their agricultural diversity retain their own options for growth and self-reliance. Homegrown operates as a cooperative business because it inherently requires community involvement.

Support social justice

Unsold perishable goods return to the community's hungry through local non-profits. Members have the opportunity to participate in seasonal food sponsorship for local organizations and food kitchens. And the cooperative offers very small farmers – including young farmers, women, and racial minorities – an opportunity to build economic opportunity and security through agricultural entrepreneurship.

Enrich the local economy

Most profits of the industrial food system go to a middle-man or giant agribusiness CEO thousands of miles away. Spending your dollars in the community keeps your money cycling within the local economy, providing economic opportunities and a flow of monies to a thriving community. Spending money through Homegrown helps more money for each product go directly to the producer, reducing the loss of family farms that causes rural communities to deteriorate. Supporting small farmers preserves open space, jobs, and the security of a local, healthful food supply. Buying food directly from farmers and ranchers puts your money to work at the grass roots of our local and state economy, where it does the most economic good for the most people. Florida needs that right now.

Homegrown Local Food Cooperative was voted one of the Top Five Slow Money businesses in the country in the Slow Money USA national competition in Summer 2010. Learn more about how cooperative community businesses can support your local economy at www.SlowMoney.org.

Avoid long lines and traffic jams

Homegrown Co-op offers a uniquely convenient grocery shopping experience – our biweekly online farmer's market. From the comfort of your own home, you can browse the product lists and compile your order. Once you learn the system, you can order most of your weekly groceries in only 5 minutes. We offer a convenient Downtown Orlando pick up as well as home delivery.

You can also purchase the freshest food in town five days a week at our Farm Store, at 2310 North Orange Avenue. Surplus produce, bread, eggs, meat, cheese, juices, and a wide variety of food, including a full herbal apothecary from Leaves and Roots, is available for drop-in Wednesday through Sunday.