I know that the local food market makes up only a very small percentage of what Americans spend on food–I believe your blog said something like 1%–but I don’t think that necessarily reflects how much local food folks are actually eating. There’s also the food that we grow in our own gardens, not to mention the food that’s bartered. Granted, it’s still much smaller than it should be, but I’m still encouraged by the fact that there are more than ten times as many farmers’ markets as there were 30 years ago, and that local food is chic these days.

For better or for worse, many of the foods that are central to Western diets today started out as high priced luxury items. Sugar and white bread are examples, and the mainstream meat industry also took a product that rich people ate every day and poorer people ate seasonally, and made it an everyday food for nearly everyone.

I think that the fact that fresh, local foods are currently positioned as luxury items could ultimately help to bring them mainstream and even bring down their prices a bit as we develop some sustainable economies of scale. Unlike the spread of sugar, white bread and factory-farmed meat, taking the local foods movement to the next level won’t necessarily exploit people and degrade the product. Even though Wal Mart has begun selling “local” foods that are shipped to warehouses and then back again, most local foods these days are sold at farmers’ markets and through CSA’s. People enjoy meeting the folks who grow their food. I vend at several thriving farmers markets in low income neighborhoods, so I can say first hand that this isn’t just an elitist, upper income phenomenon.

If 50% of Americans own stock, then 50% of Americans could, in theory, find ways of investing in their local economies instead. Small changes can become big changes, but it takes time.

In 1980, only about 13% of Americans owned stocks. By 2000, this number had jumped to just a bit higher than 50%, which of course neo-liberals everywhere hailed as a marker of the great success of capitalism. What it really marks is the gutting of American unions and the shift of the burden of retirement income, especially in terms of risk, onto the backs of American workers through the dissolution of the pension system in favor of the 401k system, a system that further enriches the rich at the expense of people who work.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 2004 more than a third of all people living in New York State could not afford to meet even a *basic* family budget. In other words, even when they were paying industrial food prices, they couldn’t meet their most basic needs of clothing, food, housing, transportation, child care, etc. For them, and many others, neither stocks, nor local food are a choice.

As long as we in the local food movement have things like buying stock as a reference, we are never going to be able to imagine a just and *broadly inclusive* local-regional farming and food system.

Just as important as working to build local-regional farming and food systems infrastructures that reduce our fossil fuel consumption and lower our costs as much as possible, we need to recognize that the buy local movement needs to be, perhaps first and foremost, a movement for economic, social, and political justice. We cannot simply say, “but this is the true cost of raising good food!” We must say, “This is the true cost of raising good food, and all people everywhere need to earn enough to afford it!” We need to recognize that the local food movement can and should be the driving force for broad and deep economic, social, and political change.