Why Food is Localizing

As noted earlier, the spread of the local food movement represents changes in demand, with growing consumer interest in eating locally, and changes in supply, as CFEs expand or form to take advantage of shifting consumer demand. Price is a factor, of course, and as more CFEs enter the marketplace, local food prices are trending downward. CFEs themselves are learning how to bring down their costs through greater volume, through smarter distribution techniques, through the better use of technology, and through collaboration with other CFEs. The next section of this report elaborates the learning that is occurring on the supply side of the equation. 

For a moment, though, it’s worth elaborating the demand side. Consumers are not only looking for the lowest priced food but also the best value for a given price. And in many ways, consumers are finding that local food, even if it’s nominally pricier, delivers better value. Specifically, consumers are finding special value in local food in five ways: 

• Better Nutrition and Health: Because many foods lose nutrients over time, local food means quicker delivery of foodstuffs with less loss of nutrition. Moreover, knowing a farmer or rancher tends to enhance a consumer’s trust in the healthfulness of his or her products. Local foods also typically involve less processing, which means fewer chemicals and additives. Replacing processed with fresh foods, as author Michael Pollan argues, is a powerful way to improve consumer health and reduce the incidence of obesity and diabetes.[8] Every headline about a breakdown in the mainstream food system outbreaks of e coli in hamburger meat and peanuts from distant suppliers, for example reinforces people’s desires to re localize their purchasing to producers they trust. 
  
  

• Better Taste: To the extent that food is about taste, local food excels. FoodRoutes Network, one of the nation’s most prominent promoters of local food over the past decade, captures this concept in its slogan, “Buy Fresh, Buy Local.” Local food, whether lobsters from the coastal waters of Maine or Saska berries from Saskatchewan, shapes local tastes, generates signature local recipes, and provides icons of local identify and pride.
  
  

• More Civic Engagement: Anyone who has been to a farmers market, like the Greenmarkets we studied in New York City, knows that the shopping experience is fundamentally different from that of a supermarket. A supermarket is about finding and purchasing foods as quickly and efficiently as possible. A farmers market is about consumers chatting, learning from, and developing relationships with local food producers, and about neighbors interacting with one another. An entire sociology literature has developed suggesting that communities characterized by local business results in greater civic welfare, less social strife, and greater equality.[9]
  
  

• Stronger Community Economies: Local food is a critical economic driver for local economies. Local food businesses provide local jobs and pay local taxes. Every loaf of bread unnecessarily imported means the leakage of dollars outside the local economy and the loss of a local bread business that could contribute to local prosperity. But the case for locally owned food businesses is even more compelling, because local businesses spend more of their money locally. Unlike outsider owned businesses, they tend to advertise in local media, hire local accountants and attorneys, provide top level management experience, and reinvest profits in the community. Numerous studies have documented that a dollar spent on a local business yields two to four times the “economic multiplier” the underlying source of income, wealth and jobs as an equivalent nonlocal business.[10] Additionally, there is a growing body of evidence that local businesses are particularly good at attracting tourists and future entrepreneurs, promoting creative economies, and stimulating charitable contributions.[11]
  
  

• More Sustainability: Local food is, finally, a tool for sustainability. Farmers are among the most important stewards of local land. Because agriculture accounts for approximately 30% of the earth’s land surface, environmentally sensitive production of foodstuffs is critical to maintaining healthy habitats, air, water, soil, and ecosystems that ultimately support healthy people.[12] To eat sustainably means growing and processing foodstuffs in a sustainable manner, and doing so within a local ecosystem makes the accomplishment all the more compelling. Any community on the planet that cannot sustainably feed itself necessarily places burdens on the ability of other communities to feed themselves. Put positively, business models that meet local food needs sustainably can, if shared and multiplied globally through studies like this one, teach communities in other parts of the world to feed themselves sustainably.[13] Moreover, since we know that all local businesses, including CFEs, tend to spend their money locally, their “inputs” travel less, use less energy, and thereby emit fewer pollutants and less climate-disrupting carbon dioxide.
  
  

Together, these factors suggest why millions of consumers, particularly in developed countries, are turning to local food, even when the price of local food is a bit higher than nonlocal alternatives. But for the movement to spread further—to poorer residents of developed countries and to poorer countries in general—the gap between local and conventional food, where it exists, will have to become smaller. This is on the verge of happening.