Is buying local always best?
Small shops and farmers benefit.
But that may be outweighed
by cost to other parts of the world.
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GROWN: 'Buy local' activists say buying locally
grown produce at farmers' markets like this
one in Boston's Copley Square helps cut down
on shipping costs. But some say agriculture-related
emissions can be minimized by buying food
from wherever it grows best. Photo: Ashley
Twiggs |
By
G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian
Science Monitor
To buy or not to buy from local farmers, stores,
and craftspeople - that is the moral question.
It's stirring sharp debate about what it means
to do the right thing at the cash register.
The question has roots in a fast-growing "buy
local" movement. About 36 cities and towns,
from Seattle to Salt Lake City to Tampa, Fla.,
have over the past five years adopted systems
to label and promote locally owned businesses.
Since 1999, about 5,000 farms have registered
with LocalHarvest.org, a website that connects
consumers with their local growers. In Austin,
Texas, where local merchants this year marked
the week of July 4 as "Celebrate Your Independents
Week," stickers reading "I Bought Local"
have become a popular statement of dissent against
proliferating chains.
As these efforts gain momentum, "buy local"
activists are increasingly arguing that their
cause is about more than preserving a place's
unique character. It's also a moral issue, they
say, because local businesses are more visible
and therefore more accountable on issues from
employment to the environment than are competitors
with headquarters and operations in faraway places.
"If it's done locally, you have some sense
of what the ethics are of its production"
methods, says Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher
at the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance
and author of "Big Box Swindle: The True
Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's
Independent Businesses."
For instance, if goods "are produced in our
community, we're going to know if there are 11-year-olds
working in that factory," she says.
Others, however, question on an ethical level
the wisdom of maximizing local production and
consumption. A local focus can breed an unhealthy
provincialism and lead to practices that harm
both the environment and the poor in developing
nations, according to John Clark, a social development
specialist for East Asia at the World Bank and
author of "Worlds Apart: Civil Society and
the Battle for Ethical Globalization."
For example, he notes, an estimated 50,000 Bangladeshi
children lost precious garment industry jobs as
a result of a 1996 boycott by Western shoppers
who sought other sources for clothing. An ethic
of buying local, he says, runs the risk of multiplying
similar, albeit unintended, consequences overseas.
"What are sweatshops to us may be a dream
job there" in Bangladesh, Mr. Clark says.
"But all that goes out the window if we only
buy local.... I think we need more sophistication
than just, 'buy local.' "
On multiple fronts, advocates of consumer-driven
social change are at odds over buying local. Whether
the benefits to small-scale, domestic producers
and merchants outweigh the costs to the world's
poor and the environment is a matter of spirited
debate. In the end, conscientious consumers may
need to choose a group to support, whether it's
local shopkeepers or foreign craftspeople or someone
else, and then find effective channels to put
dollars in their pockets. If the planet is the
chosen cause, the task involves deciphering the
true impact local systems are having on the environment.
On the environmental issue, "buy local"
proponents argue that their approach is ecofriendly.
That's because the average plate of food on an
American dinner table travels about 1,500 miles
from points of harvest, according to Aley Kent,
Northeast field coordinator for Heifer International.
People concerned about global warming and high
fuel costs, she says, can do the world a favor
by buying food grown on farms within 50 or 100
miles of where they live.
"Maybe we might not be as dependent on a
fossil-fuel economy for our food" if Americans
make a point to buy it locally, Ms. Kent says.
But here critics push back. Thanks to superefficient
shipping systems, the amount of fuel used per
unit of food is "minuscule," says Alex
Avery, director of global food research at the
Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He suggests
the best way to minimize agriculture-related emissions
is to buy food from the world region where it
grows best.
"Efficiency is what makes the difference
for the environment," because it reduces
total carbon output, Mr. Avery says. "If
you can leave an acre wild [by making other acreage
more efficient], that's a conservation tool."
Clark takes the point one step further. He says
biases in favor of local production techniques
can lead not only to wasteful energy systems such
as growing bananas in domestic hothouses, but
also to a mistaken idea that techniques most familiar
to consumers are also ecofriendly.
If local farmers "are using tractors, as
they most certainly will be, then probably right
from the start that means the food is less energy
efficient in terms of oil use than hand-plow or
ox-plow production in a developing country,"
Clark says. "And so it can be very deceptive
to say that because it's local, it's avoiding
all of these problems."
Whether buying local brings more social benefit
than detriment is another point of contention.
Proponents of the practice insist it is critical
for maintaining strong communities, connected
by neighborhood shops and sustained by their region's
crops, in an age of fragmentation and alienation
from one another.
A lack of connectedness "is probably why
we have so much depression," says Guillermo
Payet, founder and president of LocalHarvest,
an Internet-based clearinghouse where small-scale
farmers and consumers find one another.
To the notion that farmers overseas likewise need
American dollars to keep their communities strong,
Mr. Payet counters with recollections from his
native Peru: "Stuff that's grown for export
just goes to enrich the elites down there."
What's more, Ms. Mitchell says, to patronize local
businesses is to support those companies that
give most generously, per dollar in revenue, to
local charities. The practice also enhances diverse
thinking in a community because it supports retailers
who carry books, movies, and music that aren't
available in national chain stores.
Others, however, wonder about the cost - in terms
of Americans' ties to foreign communities - of
shunning goods made far away and, in some cases,
marketed via national chains. Among those concerned
is Roy Jacobowitz, senior vice president for development
and communications at Acción International,
a Boston-based nonprofit lender to micro-entrepreneurs
in developing nations.
"The 'buy locally' argument is an isolationist
argument, which I think is a dangerous one,"
Mr. Jacobowitz says. The danger, he says, comes
in shutting the door to the reality: "Poor
entrepreneurs in the emerging world need the opportunity
to sell into markets that can pay fair prices
for their goods." But if American consumers
insist on buying local, he says, dreamers in the
developing world will never reach their goals.
Voices in this debate admit few consumers stick
100 percent to any shopping policy. Avery, for
instance, believes in supporting large-scale agricultural
efficiencies, but he also supports one of his
local cattle ranchers near Stanton, Va., by joining
three neighbors and buying all the meat from one
steer each year. But although he's intentionally
supporting a local farm, he admits it isn't for
ethical reasons.
"I don't want to see the Shenandoah Valley
become another northern Virginia" in terms
of converting farmland to development, he says.
"It's very selfish. Am I really acting ethically
if I'm acting selfishly?"