Why Buy Local?
Buying locally will strengthen our local economy - Dollars spent in your community circulate anywhere from 5 to 15 times before leaving. For example, when you buy something at a local store, the store takes some of those dollars to pay an employee who circulates it in the community through their purchases....Stores will also use some of your purchase dollars toward taxes for local services that come back to your community (and their employees will spend the money). And so on and so on. When you purchase something outside of your area your dollars stop there and no one in your community benefits. Here's another interesting fact:
For each dollar a consumer spends at a locally owned independent business approximately 80% goes back to the community versus about 35% from a franchise or chain
Buying locally will safeguard your family's health - When you purchase your foods at a local level either through food markets, farm markets, direct from the farm or a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) you know where the food is coming from; you don't have to worry about massive product recalls; and you can ask (and find out) if the grower uses chemicals, antibiotics, hormones or genetically modified seeds. The other added benefits are free - taste and freshness - because your food didn't travel 1400 miles (current average).
Buying locally grown food will support your local family farms -Small family farms are in danger, so when you purchase local foods you're ensuring that more of your money is going to your neighbor farmer.
3% of the farms in the US supply 75% of the nation's food (Grown Locally Cooperative, Pottsville, IA)
In a large supermarket .18 of each dollar the store spends on food goes to the grower, and .82 goes to the middlemen (localharvest.org)
Buying locally will protect your environment -Local foods and products don't have to travel far to get to the end user thereby reducing carbon dioxide emissions and packing materials. Buying locally grown foods will also help keep the family farms going which will keep them from having to sell and turning valuable farm land into developments.
90% of fossil fuel energy used, in producing the world's food supply, goes toward packaging, transportation and marketing. Only 10% goes into producing the food
Adam Smith, considered by many to be the father of capitalism, envisioned a world of local economies populated by small entrepreneurs, artisans, and family farmers with strong community roots engaged in producing and exchanging goods and services to meet the needs of themselves and their neighbors (YES magazine, Winter 2009)
