President Donald Trump announced a sweeping plan to impose tariffs on almost all foreign imports to the United States, a plan that sent financial markets into a tailspin, then reversed course on some of those tariffs.
The rollercoaster tariff war has many people uncertain of their own financial future, a concern that led one Augusta County woman to action.
Olivia Hathaway created a food map.
“A lot of people I know were very concerned because one of the first things they thought that would affect stateside is the grocery store,” Hathaway said. “Most people don’t really know what’s imported. If you quiz someone on how many things in their shopping cart are imports versus locally grown, I don’t think most people would know.”
Hathaway thought, if the purpose of the tariffs is to increase what’s produced in the United States, she wanted to help people figure out where they could buy food locally.
“I know there are plenty of farms in the area,” she said. “I just don’t know how to buy from them or if I’m already buying from them. Maybe they already sell their food to the places I’m buying from and I just don’t know I’m buying local tomatoes.”
The food map she created contains a lot of categories. You can search “Food Map of the Valley” on Facebook to find the map. As of Friday, there were eight categories, although this is an ever changing map that Hathaway is updating as she gets responses from the community.
The categories are:
- Food sellers — People who are selling from their farm or home
- Farmers’ markets — Places that sell locally produced foods
- Community supported agriculture — A production and marketing model where consumers buy shares of a farm’s harvest in advance
- Community gardens — A piece of land gardened by a group of people individually or collectively
- Bonus: Other kinds of farms — Non-food farms
- Miscellaneous: Food growing classes/resources — Resources that can help people produce food.
- Food banks — Outlets to help with food accessibility
- Wineries/cideries/breweries — Locally produced wines, ciders and beer
Once you pull up the map, just click pins on the map to see what they sell and how to contact them. You can also type keywords in the search bar and see pins that use those words in the description in the results below. If you click “highlight all matches from my map,” a halo will appear around all the pins that match your search. You can use this to search things like “eggs” to find places that carry eggs or “SNAP / EBT” to find markets/CSA’s that take that form of payment.
A major contributor to Hathaway’s map project was the Blue Ridge Young Democrats. They helped her get all the locations in Bath and Highland counties and have widely shared the map throughout the community.
If you are or know a food grower who should be on this map, Hathaway has a survey to fill out: https://forms.gle/YY14vXyKMRn6xRss8. If you produce or sell any kind of grocery good, you are eligible to be on the map. This includes things like honey, preserved foods, etc. (not just produce). If you teach classes in growing, canning, or preserving food, you can also be on the map.
The project began just as a Shenandoah Valley project, but Hathaway received responses from people in other parts of the state, so she added those. Now she calls it the food map of the Valley plus more. She is limiting it to Virginia.
— Patrick Hite is a reporter at The News Leader. Story ideas and tips always welcome. Connect with Patrick (he/him/his) at [email protected] and on Instagram @hitepatrick. Subscribe to us at newsleader.com.
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