Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

The writers don't seem to realize the global economy is faltering and local 
food and local trades offer more security against what's coming, and the rest 
of the debate will be overtaken by events.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/In-a-Global-Economy-What-Does-It-Mean-to-buy-902738.php#page-1

In a Global Economy, What Does It Mean to 'buy Local'?
By Frederick Melo Fmelo@pioneerpress.com, Staff
Published: 01:18 a.m., Thursday, December 16, 2010


Despite its international flavor, the Latin-themed District Del Sol on
St. Paul's West Side is the latest in a long line of communities to
adopt the slogan "buy local" for the holidays. The Riverview Economic
Development Association kicked off its campaign late last month with a
business luncheon, urging more West Side residents to consider a trip
to, say, Novedades Lupita and El Burrito Mercado for their Christmas
sweaters and holiday fixings, respectively, rather than SuperTarget or
the Mall of America.

To that end, they're pushing coupons and discount cards, shopping tips
and coordinated sales events to get consumers to walk down the street.

The thinking is that people don't always realize they can buy most
everything they need within walking distance of their homes, at the
same family-run shops that employ their neighbors, give character to
their historic districts and fund their block parties, farm teams and
street cleanups.

"I think each time you spend a dollar, you're voting for that company
and how it approaches its community and what it's about," says Dan
Schmidt, vice president of Great River Office Products on Wabasha
Street, in a YouTube marketing video supporting the West Side
campaign.

Minneapolis, Stillwater and any number of cities across the country
have been singing a similar holiday tune for years. For sometimes
differing reasons, organic growers, business associations and
environmental groups have been pushing the "buy local" attitude, which
combines elements of small-business promotion with a fresh take on the
old effort to "buy American."

The "buy local" trend isn't without its critics. Some point out that
large retailers such as Target and Best Buy are homegrown, too, and
pump millions of dollars into the economy through jobs and corporate
sponsorships.

Others think there's little point to buying local if the toys at the
corner store are made in China. Free-market proponents warn that
attempts at isolationism are unrealistic and maybe even dangerous in
an era of globalization, where increasingly open markets are sweeping
foreign parts into American plants for final assembly and onto
American store shelves, and vice versa.

Regions that don't specialize in producing particular goods and
services get left behind.

"What if I work in an area that is heavily dependent on national or
international trade? Buying things local might hurt my income," said
Louis Johnston, an economic historian at the College of St. Benedict
and St. John's University.

The American colonies were importing and exporting goods before the
birth of the nation, Johnston said, and the national economy was
"integrated" — with regions trading with each other, instead of being
purely self-sufficient — by the Civil War.

"It's not clear 'buying local' is better," he said. "It simply isn't.
We've gone away from a world where small communities produce
everything for themselves. We got rid of that 250 years ago. If we
want to go back to that, we've got an awful lot to undo."

The think tank Minnesota 2020 disagrees. It recently released a report
showing that buying eco-friendly gifts at local shops keeps more money
in Minnesota. It also assembled an online map and "Made in Minnesota"
gift guide highlighting stores that carry locally crafted products.

In 2004, the often-quoted Andersonville Study of Retail Economics
showed that for every $100 spent in local stores in the Chicago
neighborhood of Andersonville, $68 remained in the general area,
compared with $43 spent at large department stores not headquartered
in Illinois.

The report found that local firms procure local goods and services at
more than twice the rate of chains.

"Your money is circulating locally," said Meg Brownson, owner of the
Al Fresco Casual Living home-furnishings store in Stillwater, where
the Main Street Independent Business Alliance is pushing its own "buy
local" effort. "It's local families you're supporting. Also, the local
businesses are what give an area its character. When you lose all the
local, independent businesses, we're all going to be cookie-cutter,
big-box chain stores."

'MOSTLY LOCAL' FOODS

Along a more agricultural vein, a new generation of foodies has been
dubbed "locavores" or "localvores." On the San Francisco Bay
Area-based Locavores.com , for instance, enthusiasts challenge
visitors to eat, for an entire month, only foods grown within a
100-mile radius of San Francisco.

Skeptics have noted that would rule out, among other things, Minnesota
walleye and Wisconsin cheese, Idaho potatoes, Russian vodka, African
coffee and all manner of foreign cuisine.

Dick Trotter, owner of Trotter's Cafe and Bakery in St. Paul, thinks
he's found a good middle ground, buying Minnesota meats and produce
whenever he can. He gets his chicken from Callister Farm in West
Concord; his produce and pork shoulders from Hidden Stream Farm in
Elgin; and his eggs, grains and produce from Whole Farm, a cooperative
of roughly two dozen farms in Long Prairie.

"For us, it's knowing where our food comes from and knowing that
(animals) are raised humanely," said Trotter, who has been promoting
local foods through his restaurant and catering company since 1989.
"We got our turkey from Whole Farm for Thanksgiving. It's not organic,
but I know the farms — there's not 1,000 turkeys in a barn. I know
they're not getting antibiotics, because they're not raised in close
quarters. They don't need them."

The same "mostly local" approach to cuisine holds court at Good Earth,
a Parasole-owned restaurant in Roseville and Edina, and Create, a
catering company in Northeast Minneapolis. The Golden Fig, a
fine-foods store on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, maintains that it has
been "making locavores happy since 2006."

Not everyone is on board. Some say large retailers such as Target and
Walmart make products more readily affordable to people with lower
incomes than neighborhood shops do, and large retailers in turn
provide jobs, partner with charities and nonprofit causes, and sponsor
everything from sports stadiums to holiday pageants.

Massachusetts author G. Jeffrey MacDonald is an ordained minister who
often writes about economics, ethics and social justice. He thinks
favoring locally crafted products might not only hurt development in
poorer nations but could also invite similar restrictions on
American-made goods. He notes that specialization and mass production
of anything — such as wheat or bananas — might actually be more
energy-efficient.

"If Americans buy their art and food only from local artists and
farmers, for example, then many of the world's struggling poor people
... will have no viable way to get ahead because they'll have no major
market for their goods," MacDonald wrote in an e-mail.

"We live in a global economy," he continued. "It might not make
economic or environmental sense to grow tomatoes or bananas in U.S.
greenhouses when overseas growers have the right climate and
infrastructure to do the job and then export to the U.S."

BUT WHAT IS IT?

And what's local? BrandWeek recently reported that 41 percent of poll
respondents believed buying a foreign car manufactured in an American
plant is, in fact, an American product. About as many respondents said
they disagreed, and the rest said they weren't sure.

In other words, reasonable people differ about whether their car is
from the United States or Japan.

"Buy local" proponents talk about the importance of reducing carbon
emissions — lowering a product's "carbon footprint" — by buying
locally made goods and locally grown produce that don't have as far to
travel to your kitchen as products from across the country or
overseas. But who's to say that local shops are any more likely to
carry turkeys and vegetables from Minnesota and Wisconsin farms than,
say, Cub Foods, Rainbow or SuperTarget?

Another argument for buying locally is that consumers keep jobs within
their neighborhood rather than big-box department stores, but if
neither the corner store nor the Walmart offers its cashiers
retirement plans, there's little difference for the workers.

Mary Hamel still sees a benefit to knowing the clerk behind the counter.

"My personal opinion is a lot of the benefits are intangible — what it
does for the community, the aesthetics," said Hamel, executive
director of St. Paul-based Metro Independent Business Alliance, which
has been asking Twin Cities residents to "buy local" since 2005. "I
want to live in a community where the owners of businesses live where
their businesses are and contribute in countless ways — donations to
charity, supporting local schools."

Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.

Minnesota 2020 Gift Guide: www.mn2020.org/giftguide

Buy Local MN: www.buylocalmn.com

Minneapolis has dedicated a webpage to its "buy local" efforts,
focusing on farmers markets and food cooperatives:
www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/sustainability/buy-local .asp.

Under the slogan "Buy Fresh, Buy Local," the Land Stewardship Project
( landstewardshipproject.org ) markets produce from Minnesota's
family-size farms to city dwellers, based on the belief that less
intensive agriculture is more ecologically sustainable.

The Minnesota Department of Agriculture promotes local growers through
its "Minnesota Grown" website — www3.mda.state.mn.us/mngrown — and a
print directory of 840 places where consumers can buy food directly
from the farmer.