It’s been hard to find good economic news lately: sub-prime mortgage crisis, bank buyouts, Federal bailout, gas shortages, rising food prices. Solutions seem far away and out of our hands.
There is something we can do, however, and it’s a pretty tasty solution: eat more local food!
Eating locally-produced and –prepared food strengthens our local economy in a number of ways. Obviously, it preserves jobs for farmers and restaurant employees. There’s no cut of restaurant profits that goes to a corporate headquarters, so those profits tend to circulate through our community rather than go out-of-state. Eating locally also means fewer of our food dollars go to pay for petroleum, so we’re a little more insulated from changes in fuel prices.
But here’s another thought. The more we develop our local food economy, the more self-reliant our area can be. Not that we’d ever want to live without coffee and chocolate, oranges and avocados, and corn from Iowa if we have a bad drought here. But wouldn’t it be nice to know that you’d still eat well even if fewer truckloads of California produce trekked across the country?
Eating locally now helps ensure we can continue to eat locally in the future.
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