MORE ON THE SMALL-MART MOVEMENT…
I missed this story when it came out, but a reader sent it along and it’s still worth reading because it represents how smart communities can look beyond the big box and not become just another whistle stop on Wal Mart’s revenue railway. From Fortune:
Local businesses in Whatcom County, Wash., next month will exhort their customers to “Buy Fresh Eat Local.”
Some people in the scenic, mountainous region will take a pledge to nourish themselves for a week entirely from the local food shed – drinking milk from local cows, eating fresh-baked organic bread and patronizing restaurants like Flats Tapas Bar, which will serve such dishes as flatbread with all-local smoked salmon, caramelized apple, gouda cheese and hazelnuts.
Others will enjoy the Downtown Carrot Jubilee, a chance to taste local carrots harvested that day; they’ll wear “I Ate Local Today” stickers.
“We want to help raise awareness of the value of local food systems,” explains Max Morange of Sustainable Connections, a network of more than 500 Bellingham-area businesses that sponsors the annual event. “We’re losing farmland very quickly.”
Eating locally is something that has been promoted here in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and local farmers’ markets are alway busy.
It really does make a tremendous amount of sense for three reasons: first, it helps to keep a local economy vital and doesn’t transfer money out of the region, state or even nation; second, it saves fuel and helps to reduce America’s dependance on foreign oil; and third, locally grown food is less likely to be contaiminated with pesticides that have been banned in the United States, but that are still sold outside the country.
It is, as Fortune notes, an uphill battle as people rely on price as their deciding factor. But as I learned two years ago when we first launched this blog’s precursor — No Cleveland Wal Mart — when people are informed of the larger issues involved and how their purchases may only seem to be in their best economic and health interests, they do make different decisions.
And that’s just one of the reasons I keep writing this blog.