The concept of buying local is simply to buy food (or any good or service) produced, grown, or raised as close to your home as possible. With industrialization, our food is now grown and processed in fewer and fewer locations, meaning it has to travel further to reach the average consumer’s refrigerator. Although this method of production is considered efficient and economically profitable for large agribusiness corporations, it is harmful to the environment, consumers and rural communities.
Food Miles, Resources and the Environment
"Food miles" refer to the distance a food item travels from the farm to your home. The food miles for items you buy in the grocery store tend to be 27 times higher than the food miles for goods bought from local sources.i
In the U.S., the average grocery store’s produce travels nearly 1,500 miles between the farm where it was grown and your refrigerator.ii About 40% of our fruit is produced overseas and, even though broccoli is likely grown within 20 miles of the average American’s house, the broccoli we buy at the supermarket travels an average 1,800 miles to get there. Notably, 9% of our red meat comes from foreign countries, including locations as far away as Australia and New Zealand.iii
So how does our food travel from farm field to grocery store? It’s trucked across the country, hauled in freighter ships over oceans, and flown around the world.
A tremendous amount of fossil fuel is used to transport foods such 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. Even the refrigeration required to keep your fruits, vegetables, dairy products and meats from spoiling burns up energy.
Food processors also 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.
Aside from the environmental harm that can result from processing, packaging and transporting long-distance foods, the industrial farms on which these foods are often produced are 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. Do they grow their food organically? If they're not certified organic, ask them why. Many small farms, even if they haven't taken the certification step, still utilize sustainable or organic farming methods that help protect the air, soil and water.
Health and Nutrition
Buying food from local farms means getting food when it’s at its prime. Fresh food from local farms is healthier than industrially-farmed products because the food doesn’t spend days in trucks and on store shelves losing nutrients.v
Food transported short distances is fresher (and, therefore, safer) than food that travels long distances. Local food has less of an opportunity to wilt and rot whereas large-scale food manufacturers must go to extreme lengths to extend shelf-life since there is such a delay between harvest and consumption. Preservatives are commonly used to keep foods stable longer, and are potentially hazardous to human health. Industrially-produced foods are also difficult to grow without pesticides, chemical fertilizers, antibiotics and growth hormones, all of which can be damaging to both the environment and human health.
Even though most Americans live about 60 miles from an apple orchard, the apples you typically buy at the grocery store travel 1,726 miles between the orchard and your house.iv That’s further than driving from Portland, Maine to Miami, Florida!
Local foods from small farms usually undergo minimal processing, are produced in relatively small quantities, and are distributed within a few dozen miles of where they originate. Food produced on industrial farms, however, is distributed throughout the country and world, creating the potential for disease-carrying food from a single factory farm to spread rapidly throughout the entire country. The 2006 E coli outbreak is a good example of this, as contaminated spinach from a single region in California managed to sicken people in 26 states.vi
Products such as ground beef, which is pooled from hundreds of different animals, are of particular concern. The meat from a single diseased cow could end up contaminating hundreds of pounds of food distributed to thousands of people. Once such a product is on shelves, it is very difficult to determine where the contaminated meat came from. Preventing or controlling disease outbreaks in such a system is nearly impossible.
In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the federal agency which inspects meat and poultry, does not have the authority to order a recall of dangerous or mislabled product once it has left a plant. The agency can only urge the company to issue a recall themselves. This often leads to delays in notifying the public, wasting valuable time and increasing the odds that unsafe products get eaten by consumers.
Family Farms and Community
According to the USDA, the U.S. has lost over five million farms since 1935.vii Family farms are going out of business at break-neck speed, causing rural communities to deteriorate. The U.S. loses two acres of farmland each minute as cities and suburbs spread into the surrounding communities.viii By supporting local farms near suburban areas and around cities, you help keep farmers on the land, and, at the same time, preserve open spaces and counteract urban sprawl.
What You Can Do
Join the growing movement of consumers around the world who are making a little extra effort to find food raised nearby.
Check out our Eat Seasonal page to find when foods are in season in your area.
Buy food directly from your local farmer at a farm stand or a farmers market. Or join a CSA group and get a farm share.
Encourage your local grocery store to stock food from local farmers.
Visit our Shopping Guide section for CSAs, farmers markets and other sustainable outlets.
Join the 100-mile diet movement.
Did You Know?
The majority of the money spent on grocery-store food goes to suppliers, processors, middlemen and marketers. Only 3.5 cents of each dollar actually goes to the farmer.ix If you buy food from a farmers market or farm stand, you can be sure that most, if not all, of your money is going directly to the farmer.
Communities reap more economic benefits from the presence of small farms than they do from large ones. Studies have shown that small farms re-invest more money into local economies by purchasing feed, seed and other materials from local businesses,x whereas large farms often order in bulk from distant companies. Large factory livestock farms also bring down local property values with the intense odors they emit.xi
A typical carrot has to travel 1,838 miles to reach your dinner table.xii
In the U.S., a wheat farmer can expect to receive about six cents of each dollar spent on a loaf of bread—approximately the cost of the wrapping.xiii
Farmers markets enable farmers to keep 80 to 90 cents of each dollar spent by the consumer.xiv
About 1/3 of all U.S. farms are located within metropolitan areas, comprising 18% of the total U.S. farmland.xv
For More Information
Food Routes' Buy Local Campaign includes information on the benefits of buying locally and offers resources for promoting local food production.
Visit the Locavores website to get tips on eating food grown within 100 miles of your home.
Watch the Harvest Eating video podcast to learn about shopping and eating seasonally.
Although today's global marketplace allows us to buy foods grown virtually anywhere in the world all year round, these options are not the most sustainable.
Find out more...
Reports and Articles
A Guide to Serving Local Food on Your Menu
This April 2007 article from the Glynwood Center details how to serve local food in your restaurant and other foodservice settings.
Home Grown: The Case For Local Food In A Global Market
This paper explains in greater detail why buying local food is the best choice.
Food From Our Changing World
This paper outlines the preliminary results of a survey on public attitudes about globalization's impact on food sources, production, and safety.
In Search of the Ripe Stuff
This May 2003 article from the Christian Science Monitor provides background about the local food movement.
Sources
Pirog, Rich, and Andrew Benjamin. “ Checking the Food Odometer: Comparing Food Miles for Local Versus Conventional Produce Sales in Iowa Institutions. “ Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, July 2003.
Ibid.
Jerardo, Alberto. “The Import Share of U.S. Consumed Food Continues to Rise." USDA Economic Research Service, July 2002.
Pirog, Rich, and Andrew Benjamin. “Checking the Food Odometer: Comparing Food Miles for Local Versus Conventional Produce Sales in Iowa Institutions." Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, July 2003.
Norberg-Hodge, Helena, Todd Merrifield, and Steven Gorelick. Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2002.
Fox, Maggie, “U.S. FDA Says Spinach Safe but Has Bigger Concerns." Environmental News Network, October 2, 2006.
USDA Economic Research Service. “Farm Numbers/Largest Growing Fastest." Agricultural Outlook, October 2002.
American Farmland Trust. Farmland Protection Issues. 2006, (accessed October 2, 2006).
Pretty, Jules. “Some Benefits and Drawbacks of Local Food Systems." Briefing Note for TVU/Sustain AgriFood Network, November 2, 2001.
Flore, Jan L., Carol J. Hodne, Willis Goudy, David Osterberg, James Klienbenstein, Kendall M. Thu, and Shannon P. Marquez, "Social and Community Impacts," in Iowa Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Air Quality Study: Final Report. Environmental Health Sciences Research Center, University of Iowa, 2003: 148.
Herriges, Joseph A., Silvia Secchi, and Bruce A. Babcock. “Living with Hogs in Iowa: The Impact of Livestock Facilities on Rural Residential Property Values," Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University. Ames, Iowa, 2003.
Pirog, Rich, and Andrew Benjamin. “Checking the Food Odometer: Comparing Food Miles for Local Versus Conventional Produce Sales in Iowa Institutions." Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, July 2003.
Pretty, Jules. “Some Benefits and Drawbacks of Local Food Systems." Briefing Note for TVU/Sustain AgriFood Network, November 2, 2001.
Pretty, Jules. “Some Benefits and Drawbacks of Local Food Systems." Briefing Note for TVU/Sustain AgriFood Network, November 2, 2001.
Environmental Protection Agency. "Ag 101, Land Use Overview." EPA. January 2004.
http://www.umich.edu/~econdev/importsub/index.html
Import substitution as economic development
by Avik Basu
Growth and development are often uttered in the same breath and yet the goals of each are actually quite different. Growth can be thought of as expanding the size of the community through the use of land and other natural resources. Development, on the other hand, can be thought of as improving livability through, among other things, jobs, education, cultural preservation, public safety, and sense of community. But this distinction is not often made resulting in growth being seen as a solution to the problems that local communities face. Growth advocates are insistent that their projects will improve the local economy. In a time when many communities face financial crises, this is an appealing but misguided proposition, since the existence of rundown urban areas shows that growth does not necessarily lead to development. Fortunately, there exist ways for communities to develop without growing. One of those ways is through import substitution.
What is import substitution?
The import substitution approach substitutes externally produced goods and services, especially basic necessities such as energy, food, and water, with locally produced ones. By doing so, local communities can put their (hard-earned) money to work within their boundaries.
The history of import substitution
The notion of import substitution was popularized in the 1950s and 1960s as a strategy to promote economic independence and development in developing countries (Bruton 1998). This initial effort failed due in large part to the relative inefficiency of 3rd world production facilities and as a result their inability to compete in a globalizing marketplace. Since then, those countries and the rest of the world rely a great deal on foreign-produced products and, as globalization trends suggest, an export oriented approach has became the norm. Despite this, in the 1970s, import substitution came into the U.S. consciousness as a means to promote national (Buy American campaigns) and regional development and the debate continues as to its effectiveness (http://www.planning.unc.edu/courses/261/drucker/history.html).
Understanding a local economy
To understand the rationale for import substitution, one must first understand the basic forces at work in a local economy. Local economies are often described by a “leaky bucket” model in which the bucket represents the local region and money can both circulate within the bucket and flow in and out. Money circulates within the region when money that is earned locally is also spent locally. This requires that some money exists in the bucket to begin with—one way this happens is when local goods and services are purchased by consumers outside the region. Another source of inflow comes from businesses which decide to set up shop locally and generate jobs that pay local workers. The “leak” in the bucket that allows money to escape from the community is created when goods and services from outside the region are purchased with local money. It is typically assumed that a robust economy requires both the availability of capital and its circulation within a region.
The traditional view on local economic development
Local economic development often focuses on attracting businesses under the assumption that the jobs generated by those businesses will generate local income and, in turn, local spending of such income. In terms of the leaky bucket, it focuses on ensuring that money continually flows into the local region so that there will be at least some available for circulation. But continuously filling the bucket is not the only option—one can also keep more money circulating within the local economy by plugging the leakage of capital from the system. Import substitution constitutes one approach to plugging these leaks.
Plugging the leaks: Connecting local supply with local demand
One way to prevent money from leaving the local economy is to connect local demand for goods and services with the local suppliers of those goods and services. Many of the things that individuals or businesses need can be found from suppliers within the area but, due perhaps to lack of adequate information or convenience, those things are often purchased from the outside. This represents another flow of capital leaving the system. By substituting demand for externally produced things with locally produced things, communities can retain capital for use within the community.
Oregon Marketplace
In the 1980s, without the communication efficiencies of the internet, Alana Probst of Eugene, OR asked 10 local businesses to list 40 items which they purchased from out of state. Armed with this list of 400 items, she went to local businesses in search of potential bidders. In its first year, Oregon Marketplace (http://www.oregonmarketplace.com) generated over 100 new jobs as well as 2.5 million dollars in contracts. One example of its use involved an airline company which used to purchase chicken for its meals from Arkansas despite several growers just outside Eugene. In 1987, once computers were brought into the system, the program was implemented statewide to similar success (http://www.mtnforum.org/resources/library/kinsm97a.htm).
Community Supported Agriculture
In the U.S., almost 85% of the food bought within a state comes from some place else. In Massachusetts, this amounts to a 4 billion dollar leakage of capital every year. Clearly, there is a great opportunity here to reduce capital outflow. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs provide a way for food producers to sell their goods locally. Typically, a group of CSA consumers split the cost for the operation of the farm and in exchange get fresh locally produced food directly from CSA farms. For example, if a farm’s operating costs for a year were $20,000 and there were 200 members in the CSA consumer group, then each consumer would pay $100 per year for their “share” of the farm. Instead of purchasing at a grocery store chain, the money that the consumer pays as part of the CSA stays local in that it goes to the farmer who then uses it to pay for seeds, fertilizers, water, etc. (which could also be locally available). And since locally produced food does not have to travel as far, money that would otherwise have been spent on transportation—on average, food travels 1,300 miles from farm to supermarket—is available for local spending.
Plugging the leaks: Energy efficiency
Energy efficiency provides perhaps a non-intuitive approach to plugging capital leakage. Many communities get their energy by purchasing from providers outside their region.
Those communities however are unlikely to be able to produce such energy for themselves so one cannot hope to substitute externally produced energy for locally produced energy. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute estimates that 20% of a community’s gross income is spent on energy and 80% of that spending leaves the local area. Instead, communities can simply require less externally produced energy by becoming more energy efficient—it is frugality under the guise of import substitution. The money that is saved through the energy efficiency programs is effectively new money—money that would otherwise not have been available—and, though not guaranteed, it is available to be spent locally.
Osage, Iowa
The community of Osage, Iowa with a population of merely 3,800 people tried out this idea with great success. Its energy saving initiatives involved weatherization techniques, use of efficient electric motors, appliance replacement rebates, etc. and received support from businesses and residents alike. Between 1974 and 1991, they saved 7.8 million dollars and at least some of that money filtered its way back to the local economy. And besides retaining money for local circulation, Osage residents’ energy bills as of 1995 were 50% lower than the state average (http://www.pcdf.org/1992/kinsl392.htm).
Southern California Edison
Energy efficiency success stories need not be restricted to small towns in Iowa. Southern California Edison, by utilizing similar methods as Osage but on a much larger scale, developed an energy efficiency program which saved over 3 billion dollars a year. In this case, the corporation instead of community leadership took much of the initiative. It made sense financially since the cost of implementing the efficiency programs was 1% of the cost of the power plant that would been required without the measures (Kinsley 1997).
Discussion and Conclusion
For all its benefits, import substition is not free of drawbacks. For one thing, its benefits can be difficult to measure since import substitution strategies are often lumped with other strategies and its effects are difficult to tease apart. As in many economic development scenarios, the counterfactual provides fodder for criticism--it is often quite difficult to say whether import subsitutition strategies led to better economic performance or whether that performance would have come to fruition regardless of the strategies. Also, local industries often cannot take advantage of economies of scale in manufacturing their products. For example, a manufacturer who mass produces shoes with streamlined processes and exports them all over the world may be able to sell shoes at a lower price than a local shoemaker and as result the local shoemaker may not be able to compete.
Despite these drawbacks, if we assume that the import substitution strategies described earlier are able to plug the leaks of capital from the local economy and provide more dollars that could potentially be spent locally, can we know for sure whether that money actually will be spent locally? Certainly, programs such as the Oregon Marketplace make it easier for businesses to do so, but can we expect, for example, customers of Southern California Edison to use the money they save in their electric bills to spend locally? This remains an unanswered question, but it seems reasonable to assume that we cannot rely solely on people’s good will to purchase locally especially when many locally produced goods are far more expensive than alternatives. Instead, consumers must both have an understanding of the impacts of their purchases on the local economy and also find real value in the goods that are locally available. And this is often the case with many CSA customers who find that fresh produce from the farm is better in quality than what can be bought at supermarket chains. Which gives good reason to be hopeful that import substitution can provide local communities a path to economic prosperity.
Document References
Kinsley, M. (1997). Economic Renewal Guide. Snowmass, CO, Rocky Mountain Institute.
Bruton, H. (1998). A Reconsideration of Import Substitution. Journal of Economic Literature. 36(2):903-936.
Link References
Economic Renewal: http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid356.php
Case studies: http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid364.php
Community Energy Opportunity Finder: http://finder.rmi.org/
CSA: http://www.umassvegetable.org/food_farming_systems/CSA/csa_site/index.ht...
http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Smi-Z/Sustainable-Food-Systems.html
A food system is a process that aims to create a more direct link between the producers (farmers) of food and fiber and the consumers of the food. This system consists of several components, including production, processing, distribution, consumption, and waste disposal.
A food system can be characterized as being local, regional, national, or global. The word sustainable is often associated with the sustainable agriculture movement, which had its beginnings in North America in the 1980s. This period was characterized by a wave of bank foreclosures of farm operations, particularly small and family-owned farms. Many were unable to compete with the large national and international farming corporations and were forced to sell their farms and go out of business. Globalization, through international trade agreements, were also viewed by some in the agriculture community as another reason for the demise of many small and family-owned farms.
Misuse and overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides contributed heavily to the degradation of many farms and waterways throughout the United States, Canada, and other developing countries. Out of this "farm crisis" came national and international institutions and organizations of concerned citizens, producers, community organizations, and environmental groups. They agitated for the creation of policies and laws that supported new environmentally safe approaches to producing food and fiber and that would ensure the livelihood of farmers and vibrant rural communities. Thus, a sustainable food system is a system that sustains people as well as the land.
Why Are Sustainable Food Systems Important?
A sustainable food system, whether it is local or regional, brings farmers closer to consumers by producing fruits and vegetables or raising livestock or fish closer to the places they are sold. Advocates of this system believe that when it comes to food security, the closer producers are to homes and neighborhoods, the greater the access to more nutritious and affordable food.
Globally, crop production is a highly intensive operation in both inputs and energy consumption. Of the 10 to 20 percent of the fossil-fuel energy that is used by agricultural operations, 40 percent is indirect energy used in the development of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. There is thus a need to work with natural processes to conserve all resources, minimize waste, and lessen the impact on the environment. In theory, this usually means limited use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, growth regulators, and livestock feed additives. Instead, it means more reliance on methods such as crop rotations, animal manures, legumes, mechanical cultivation, mineral-bearing rocks to maintain soil fertility and productivity; and on natural, cultural, and biological controls to manage insects, weeds, and other pests. The emphasis is on prevention of problems and the use of curative interventions, such as pesticides, as last resorts.
Urban growth and infrastructure development has reduced the amount of prime agricultural land. The United States, for example, loses two acres of farmland every minute to urban growth between 1992 and 1997. According to the United Nations projections, 4.9 billion people or 60 percent of the world population will be living in urban areas by 2030. It is not clear how this population can be adequately fed and nourished. Increasing population also means increased quantities of food to be distributed, which increases the amount of trucks used to transport the food, thereby contributing to traffic congestion and air pollution.
Promoting Sustainable Local Food Systems
Consumers around the world can make a difference by choosing to vote with their dollars to support local and regional food systems. There are a
Sustainable agriculture is a method of farming that minimizes environmental damage and depletion of resources. To be successful, sustainable agriculture requires a commitment from food producers as well as food consumers. [JLM Visuals. Reproduced by permission.]number of ways that individuals can support and help to sustain food systems in their area.
Farmers markets.
Buying fresh food from local farmers markets supports family farms and circulates money within the community. Organic foods should be purchased, if possible, since they are grown with little or no artificial pesticides or fertilizers.
Community and school gardens.
These gardens provide fresh produce, particularly for underserved populations in low-income and poverty-stricken neighborhoods. This increases the dietary quality and ensures a measure of food security.
Community-supported agriculture (CSA).
In this type of arrangement, individuals buy shares the harvest of a farm before the crops are planted. In return, individuals receive fresh fruits and vegetables and sometimes local meats, cheeses, flowers, and eggs, on a weekly or prearranged basis.
Pick-your-own farms (U-Pick-It) and roadside stands.
At some rural farms, consumers are allowed to pick their own fresh fruits and vegetables. This can serve as a social outing for urban families who drive to rural roadside stands.
These practices help consumers choose foods grown using agricultural practices that keep water sources clean, support healthy soil, and encourage wildlife conservation. A healthy and successful food system emphasizes support for local sources of food production and processing, encourages and supports environmental responsibility, and provides economic stability all within the context of a local or regional area. Sustainable food systems also encompass and emphasize such larger issues as stable farm families, food security and access, community self-reliance, and even entrepreneurship. Sustainable food systems provide hope for a sustainable future.
Carlos Robles
Internet Resources
American Farmland Trust. "Farming on the Edge: Sprawling Development Threatens Americas Best Farmland." Available from
Deumling, D.; Wackernagel, M.; and Monfreda C. "Eating Up the Earth: How Sustainable Food Systems Shrink Our Ecological Footprint." Agriculture Footprint Brief, July 2003. Available from
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. Studying Food Supply and Distribution Systems to Cities in Developing Countries and Countries in Transition: Methodological and Operational Guide, revised edition. Available from
Wilkins, J. "Community Food Systems: Linking Food, Nutrition, and Agriculture." Cornell Cooperative Extension, Food and Nutrition Available from
The Idea of a Local Economy
'The idea of a local economy rests upon only two principles: neighborhood and subsistence..."
by Wendell Berry
Published in the Winter 2001 issue of Orion magazine
A TOTAL ECONOMY is one in which everything—“life forms,” for instance,—or the “right to pollute” is “private property” and has a price and is for sale. In a total economy significant and sometimes critical choices that once belonged to individuals or communities become the property of corporations. A total economy, operating internationally, necessarily shrinks the powers of state and national governments, not only because those governments have signed over significant powers to an international bureaucracy or because political leaders become the paid hacks of the corporations but also because political processes—and especially democratic processes—are too slow to react to unrestrained economic and technological development on a global scale. And when state and national governments begin to act in effect as agents of the global economy, selling their people for low wages and their people’s products for low prices, then the rights and liberties of citizenship must necessarily shrink. A total economy is an unrestrained taking of profits from the disintegration of nations: communities, households, landscapes, and ecosystems. It licenses symbolic or artificial wealth to “grow” by means of the destruction of the real wealth of all the world…
Aware of industrialism’s potential for destruction, as well as the considerable political danger of great concentrations of wealth and power in industrial corporations, American leaders developed, and for a while used, the means of limiting and restraining such concentrations, and of somewhat equitable distributing wealth and property. The means were: laws against trusts and monopolies, the principle of collective bargaining, the concept of one-hundred-percent parity between the land-using and the manufacturing economies, and the progressive income tax. And to protect domestic producers and production capacities it is possible for governments to impose tariffs on cheap imported goods. These means are justified by the government’s obligation to protect the lives, livelihoods, and freedoms of its citizens. There is, then, no necessity or inevitability requiring our government to sacrifice the livelihoods or our small farmers, small business people, and workers, along with our domestic economic independence to the global “free market.” But now all of these means are either weakened or in disuse. The global economy is intended as a means of subverting them.
In default of government protections against the total economy of the supranational corporations, people are where they have been many times before: in danger of losing their economic security and their freedom, both at once. But at the same time the means of defending themselves belongs to them in the form of a venerable principle: powers not exercised by government return to the people. If the government does not propose to protect the lives, livelihoods, and freedoms of its people, then the people must think about protecting themselves.
How are they to protect themselves? There seems, really, to be only one way, and that is to develop and put into practice the idea of a local economy—something that growing numbers of people are now doing. For several good reasons, they are beginning with the idea of a local food economy. People are trying to find ways to shorten the distance between producers and consumers, to make the connections between the two more direct, and to make this local economic activity a benefit to the local community. They are trying to learn to use the consumer economies of local towns and cities to preserve the livelihoods of local farm families and farm communities. They want to use the local economy to give consumers an influence over the kind and quality of their food, and to preserve land and enhance the local landscapes. They want to give everybody in the local community a direct, long-term interest in the prosperity, health, and beauty of their homeland. This is the only way presently available to make the total economy less total. It was once, I believe, the only way to make a national or a colonial economy less total. But now the necessity is greater.
I am assuming that there is a valid line of thought leading from the idea of the total economy to the idea of a local economy. I assume that the first thought may be a recognition of one’s ignorance and vulnerability as a consumer in the total economy. As such a consumer, one does not know the history of the products that one uses. Where, exactly, did they come from? Who produced them? What toxins were used in their production? What were the human and ecological costs of producing them and then of disposing of them? One sees that such questions cannot be answered easily, and perhaps not at all. Though one is shopping amid an astonishing variety of products, one is denied certain significant choices. In such a state of economic ignorance it is not possible to choose products that were produced locally or with reasonable kindness toward people and toward nature. Nor is it possible for such consumers to influence production for the better. Consumers who feel a prompting toward land stewardship find that in this economy they can have no stewardly practice. To be a consumer in the total economy, one must agree to be totally ignorant, totally passive, and totally dependent on distant supplies and self-interested suppliers.
And then, perhaps, one begins to see from a local point of view. One begins to ask, What is here, what is in me, that can lead to something better? From a local point of view, one can see that a global “free market” economy is possible only if nations and localities accept or ignore the inherent instability of a production economy based on exports and a consumer economy based on imports. An export economy is beyond local influence, and so is an import economy. And cheap long-distance transport is possible only if granted cheap fuel, international peace, control of terrorism, prevention of sabotage, and the solvency of the international economy.
Perhaps one also begins to see the difference between a small local business that must share the fate of the local community and a large absentee corporation that is set up to escape the fate of the local community by ruining the local community.
So far as I can see, the idea of a local economy rests upon only two principles: neighborhood and subsistence. In a viable neighborhood, neighbors ask themselves what they can do or provide for one another, and they find answers that they and their place can afford. This, and nothing else, is the practice of neighborhood. This practice must be, in part, charitable, but it must also be economic, and the economic part must be equitable; there is a significant charity in just prices.
Of course, everything needed locally cannot be produced locally. But a viable neighborhood is a community; and a viable community is made up of neighbors who cherish and protect what they have in common. This is the principle of subsistence. A viable community, like a viable farm, protects its own production capacities. It does not import products that it can produce for itself. And it does not export local products until local needs have been met. The economic products of a viable community are understood either as belonging to the community’s subsistence or as surplus, and only the surplus is considered to be marketable abroad. A community, if it is to be viable, cannot think of producing solely for export, and it cannot permit importers to use cheaper labor and goods from other places to destroy the local capacity to produce goods that are needed locally. In charity, moreover, it must refuse to import goods that are produced at the cost of human or ecological degradation elsewhere. This principle applies not just to localities, but to regions and nations as well.
The principles of neighborhood and subsistence will be disparaged by the globalists as “protectionism”—and that is exactly what it is. It is a protectionism that is just and sound, because it protects local producers and is the best assurance of adequate supplies to local consumers. And the idea that local needs should be met first and only surpluses exported does not imply any prejudice against charity toward people in other places or trade with them. The principle of neighborhood at home always implies the principle of charity abroad. And the principle of subsistence is in fact the best guarantee of giveable or marketable surpluses. This kind of protection is not “isolationism.”
Albert Schweitzer, who knew well the economic situation in the colonies of Africa, wrote nearly sixty years ago: “Whenever the timber trade is good, permanent famine reigns in the Ogowe region because the villagers abandon their farms to fell as many trees as possible.” We should notice especially that the goal of production was “as many…as possible.” And Schweitzer makes my point exactly: “These people could achieve true wealth if they could develop their agriculture and trade to meet their own needs.” Instead they produced timber for export to “the world economy,” which made them dependent upon imported goods that they bought with money earned from their exports. They gave up their local means of subsistence, and imposed the false standard of a foreign demand (“as many trees as possible”) upon their forests. They thus became helplessly dependent on an economy over which they had no control.
Such was the fate of the native people under the African colonialism of Schweitzer’s time. Such is, and can only be, the fate of everybody under the global colonialism of our time. Schweitzer’s description of the colonial economy of the Ogowe region is in principle not different from the rural economy now in Kentucky or Iowa or Wyoming. A total economy for all practical purposes is a total government. The “free trade” which from the standpoint of the corporate economy brings “unprecedented economic growth,” from the standpoint of the land and its local populations, and ultimately from the standpoint of the cities, is destruction and slavery. Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice.
This is a shortened version of the article that appeared in the magazine.