Everyday we hear about global warming, toxic pollution and species extinction and we are told that WE are to blame. We as individuals must change our consumer habits, because our greed is the cause. “Going local” may be the single most effective thing we can do. Localisation is essentially a process of decentralisation - shifting economic activity back into the hands of local businesses instead of concentrating it in fewer and fewer mega-corporations. Since food is something everyone, everywhere, needs every day, a shift from global food to local food would have a great and immediate impact, socially, economically and environmentally. Local food is simply: food produced for local and regional consumption. What are the advantages? Buying locally reduces fossil fuels and pollution. Also, local markets give farmers an incentive to diversify which lends itself better to organic methods than monoculture. Local food systems have economic benefits too, since most of the money spent on food goes to the farmer, not corporate middlemen. And small diversified farms can help reinvigorate entire rural economies, since they employ far more people per acre than large monocultures. Did you know that global food is also a lot more expensive than the price you see in the supermarket? That is because a large portion of what we pay for global food comes out of our taxes. And what do you think: If developing countries were encouraged to use their labour and their best agricultural land for local needs, rather than growing luxury crops for your and mine consumption, could we perhaps eliminate the rate of endemic hunger that way? Source: H. Norberg-Hodge
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 09:25:08 +0000
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