Even as the increasingly complex food system has become globalized, the public’s interest in where food comes from has increased.
Published: 10/08/18, Last updated: 2/28/24
Societies have always traded with one other, creating long-term partnerships with neighboring communities and even peoples on the other side of the world. But as trade routes have become dominated by a few giant corporations, the idea of establishing new routes closer to home has become more popular. Since the early 2000s, interest has been mounting in the economic, environmental and health benefits of local foods to the tune of $8.7 billion in farm revenue. And now the term “local” possesses huge cachet when it comes to marketing farm products.
While global trade routes have existed for millennia, until about a century ago most people relied on their local food systems. The invention of the refrigerated railway car in the late 1800s changed all that and allowed produce and other perishables to be shipped around the country, so that, for example, Bostonians could eat California lettuce in January. One hundred years ago, the top few companies in both the meat and railroad industries consolidated and controlled so much of the market (driving down prices for producers and driving up the costs for consumers) that the government had to step in with strong antitrust laws to break them up. Unfortunately, we have permitted these laws to lapse.
When the interstate highway system was completed in the 1960s, refrigerated trucks took over coast-to-coast shipping (which formerly had been the domain of the railways). 1 Food processing and truck shipping has been big business ever since. Today, food and agriculture companies are consolidated, and most of the world relies on a few global companies for the growing, processing, distributing and retailing of food. As of 2015, the largest companies in each sector controlled 85 percent of the beef packing industry, 66 percent of pork packing and 51 percent of broiler chicken processing. 4 On the farm side, the USDA estimates that more than 167,000 farms sold food to local markets in 2015, resulting in $8.7 billion in revenue.
Farmers’ markets have enjoyed exponential growth in the last 24 years, increasing from 1,755 in 1994 to 8,268 in 2014, with total annual sales now estimated at $1 billion. 14
Some national organizations have been instrumental in this work. The National Farm to School Network has been a source of practical information to schools and advocacy groups wanting to develop local programs. At the college and university level, the goal of Real Food Challenge is 20 percent “real” food (local, organic, produced by independent farmers) by 2020. It trains students to advocate for real food on their own campuses, including working with dining services to make the change. Health Care without Harm includes healthy food as one of its key program areas and partners, with more than 1,000 hospitals in North America to address their food sourcing. 18 Food processed and distributed locally creates jobs in related sectors; every newly added full-time job at farmers’ markets newly adds a part-time job in other sectors.
Hide References
Martinez, Steve et al. “Local Food Systems: Concepts, Impacts, and Issues.” USDA Economic Research Service, 2010. Retrieved April 12, 2019, from https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/46393/7054_err97_1_.pdf?v=0