Sustainable Thoughts and Ideas: Thinking outside the Soapbox about “Going Local.” Part 4: Is Going Local Expensive?

July 28, 2010 
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By: Nathan Melson, MS Agricultural Sciences
Written for Living Natural First Magazine June 2010

As I continue my series on “Going Local”, I’ve come to one of the questions many of us in the local food and economy movement get asked by skeptics a lot. The question is, “Is going local expensive”? This question cannot necessarily easily be answered in a short response, but the general consensus from the few studies that have been done so far is, “Not necessarily.” I will attempt to explain a reasoning over the next several paragraphs so that you can have an educated argument with the skeptics in your life about “Going Local”.

I’m sure many folks have heard the argument being made that “Going Local”, as in supporting a local food and local economy system, is just too expensive and the benefits just don’t outweigh the costs. However, most folks don’t realize that the current system is actually more expensive than a local system could be because of all the hidden costs, and the money just doesn’t stay local. We just don’t factor in all of the subsidies (provided by our taxes), fuel costs, environmental issues/costs, and quality costs in our current system when we’re at the grocery store buying a bag of 99 cent potato chips. Many folks want to argue with how expensive living locally is instead of realizing all of the benefits that it can provide for a local economy, while allowing for folks to have more control over their lives and environment. My current philosophy on “Going Local” is that all of our population should have access to good healthy food and responsibly produced energy that is marketed at a producer sustaining, yet fair price. “Going Local” should also create local jobs that pay a living wage for those who aren’t afraid of hard rewarding work, and put more people back to working on and producing from the land.

Since we are personally in the grass-fed and pastured meats business, I have folks from time to time that want to argue about the price of our products such as ground beef. We sell our ground beef, which is 90% lean and 10% fat with nothing else added and sourced from grass-fed cattle that we know where they have been and how they’ve been treated since birth, for $3.99 per pound. For the most part our demand exceeds our supply, but I still have people that tell me this is too expensive for ground beef. I’ve decided to quit arguing with these folks, because even if I tell them what I just divulged to you while explaining that there isn’t a huge distribution system between my beef and their hands, that their purchase is helping keep a sustainable farmer in business, that our livestock are processed in small batches by low volume processors, and that I can just about tell them exactly which steer or heifer that they are consuming, they still don’t believe our product is worth this small premium. There are some people who have a long way to go in understanding living locally, and some folks may not ever.

In a recent study finished by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Iowa in December 2009, they found that when only market cost was looked at for local vs. non-local fresh vegetables, non-local fresh vegetables were more expensive than local fresh vegetables. The local veggies averaged $1.25 per pound while non-local veggies averaged $1.39 per pound. That is a difference of $0.14 per pound. So this study basically says that “Going Local” with vegetables can be cheaper than non-local vegetables. So the argument that China can grow vegetables cheaper than can be done here begins to not hold as much water. I still can’t visuallize how this could be when just looking at market cost only, but certainly not with all the other hidden costs such as fuel, cheap labor, etc. that should be factored in. This study can be accessed online at http;//www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/prices.html if you would like to look into it more.

To complete a good argument outside of just money on “Going Local”, I think you have to mention the logical other benefits. Many of these are becoming more and more desired by the general public. Connecting people directly with the land and their food is a good thing. It helps them earn respect for their food, fiber, and fuel, and respect for the people who were involved in producing it. Also, who can argue against the need and desire to have clean air, clean water, and healthy living soil. Regardless of where you stand on “Climate Change” how can you consciously argue against having these three things for yourself, your kids, your friends, and your grandkids. Having access to good, nutritious, un-adulterated food is a choice, but it can’t be a choice if it isn’t given a fair playing field or isn’t available. I personally think that having this access should be a right, whether you choose to exercise that right is your decision or choice, just like voting. Allowing folks to have access to the ability to achieve good health is necessary, and has the potential to save Americans millions of dollars each year. I believe that several of the ailments that we are currently facing as a problem nation-wide have been caused by an unhealthy food system, but I’ll save that for another argument and another time.

As we look at the task before us, and what it will take to go local, not everything today is stacked against us. We actually have many things working towards our favor. All around us, Creation is trying to tell us that taking care of It and “Going Local” is the right thing to do. It isn’t about being a recluse, it is about the local environment taking care of a majority of peoples local needs. This applies whether you live in Texas, Maine, Brazil, or China for that matter. More and more producers and consumers are coming together in organizations like Slow Food (see www.slowfoodusa.org), Local Harvest (see www.localharvest.org), Texoma Core and their Texoma Grown Directory (see www.texomacore.org/Texoma-Grown-Directory.html), and the Organic Consumers Association (see www.organicconsumers.org) to network and promote the idea of “Going Local”. If you are a producer like me, local, quality products speak for themselves. “Going Local” is catching on in mainstream media and film as many people begin to see the value of this concept instead of worrying about how Greece’s Treasury woes are going to affect our economy in Texas. When we start discussing such a situation we’ve become too dependent and inter-connected. The internet has exploded with volumes of websites that include farmer’s markets, online books, articles, recipes, directories, on-line farm tours, how-to’s on gardening, how-to’s on converting your diesel truck to veggie oil, and the like. Never in our nations history has the time been so primed for a grass-roots movement like “Going Local”.

This article is the last in my series on “Going Local”. I will return to my regular information filled soapbox style articles in July. I’m glad that the publisher of this magazine has given me the opportunity to express myself in words and thought over the last year-and-a-half. I look forward to writing for this audience for many more months and years to come. I hope that you, the reader, get as much out of reading my thoughts as I do generating them. Please don’t hesitate to let me know what you think.

I want to close this article series with a few summarizing comments from a practical over-educated farm boy. If we are serious about taking the high road and changing our region, state, and country to a beneficial more locally based system, I think the following statements will be key. We should stand up for our farms, consumer choice, and “Going Local”, while being tactful, fact based, organized, and firm. We have to promote an environment that encourages thinking outside the box, house, yard, or pasture. We must encourage opportunities for folks to have choices and opportunities. We have to be mindful of defining local and how it is self-regulated and/or government regulated. Remember “local” has varying definitions, and it depends on the product. We must support like-minded groups and individuals, while encouraging networks. We should listen with an open mind to all thoughts and comments, whether good or bad. We should promote the harvest and gleaning of all relevant and useful information and apply it in our lives and businesses. We live in a time where access to information is the most free and easy to access as any other time in history. We should never loose site of actual costs and actual affordability. We should always try to be in some state of education, whether that is educating ourselves or teaching others. Finally, one of the things that I think will be most important in this movement is getting young people involved early, now, and often. Farmers aren’t getting any younger.

Until July, Farm On and Get Local!