The Economics of Local FoodLocal food strengthens the economy. It keeps money in local communities and helps create jobs, which in turn can help reduce crime. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_19060.cfm The Economics of Local Food By Jane Black You feel pretty virtuous when you buy local food. It's fresher, maybe even more nutritious, proponents say. Now advocates are pushing another selling point: Local food strengthens the economy. It keeps money in local communities and helps create jobs, which in turn can help reduce crime. Wow. And you thought all you were getting was a really good peach. Sarah DeWeerdt rounds up the facts about local food and economic development in a new, excellent article in World Watch. The money farmers earn goes in large part to buy seeds, animal feed and fertilizers from outside the region. In southeast Minnesota, farmers spend $996 million to grow $912 million worth of crops. Similar patterns are found in Iowa, Arizona and Washington. Producing local food could change that, DeWeerdt reports. If those people in southeastern Minnesota bought just 15 percent of their food from local sources, it would generate two-thirds as much income as all the region's farmers receive from subsidies. If the population in and around Seattle bought 20 percent of their food dollars at local businesses, it would inject an extra billion dollars each year into the local economy. "Every time money changes hands within a community, it boosts the community's overall income and level of economic activity, and fuels the creation of jobs," DeWeerdt explains. "The more times money changes hands within the community before heading elsewhere, the better off the community is. And spending money at a locally based business has a greater multiplier effect, the theory goes, because locally owned businesses are more likely to respend their dollars locally." The article draws on pioneering work by Ken Meter, president of the Crossroads Research Center in Minneapolis, who has studied the benefits of local food for more than 20 years. The argument, Meter told me, is catching on. It's not only foodies who are interested in local food. It's state and county economic development officers. This is happening even in the Midwest, where production agriculture has long ruled supreme. Of course, DeWeerdt rightly notes that many of the potential benefits of "shifting food dollars to the local food system are just that: potential." To date, she reports, no community has actually undertaken a sharp enough shift to see if predictions come true. And, it's hard to tell how a change to consumer behavior would affect the larger economy. Still, government officials appear willing to explore how local food can help bolster rural economies. Last week, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan sent out a memo that highlighted USDA funds available to help build local food systems. The total amount of money available: up to $1.24 billion. Good for you. Good for the economy. You have to admit, it makes that local corn or peach or tomato taste just that little bit more delicious. |
OCA on New Food Safety Bill-HR 2749There's been a lot of buzz on the web about the new Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (HR-2749). Many of our supporters have called or emailed us to find our stance on the issue. Although the Organic Consumers Association is fairly satisfied that the bill is intended to protect organic farmers from being negatively impacted by new food safety regulations, the bill does not address the underlying causes of America's persistent and evermore serious food safety crisis: factory farms and chemical-intensive agriculture. When addressing the concerns of E.coli or salmonella, the bill focuses on fresh vegetables and fruits rather than CAFOs or intensive confinement factory farms, in effect treating the symptom and not the disease. A close look at the nation's food poisoning epidemics over the past decade reveal that the overwhelming majority of fruit and vegetable contamination incidents are a direct result of water and soil pollution from large factory farms. The OCA believes that HR-2749 should be amended to address factory farming: 1) Animals should never be fed blood, manure or slaughterhouse waste. 2) Cows need to eat grass. 3) Animals need to be spread out on enough land to absorb their waste. 4) CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) pose unacceptable risks to human health such as antibiotic resistance, incubate dangerous viruses and pathogens such as the Swine Flu and Bird Flu, contaminate the environment, institutionalize animal cruelty, and need to be phased out and shut down. Reprinted with Permission from The Organic Consumers Association http://www.organicconsumers.org/ |
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