Buying Local Is An Investment Your Locale

Buying local is an investment not only in your local economy, but also in the practices and ideals of the area in which you’re shopping. You get to know who your goods and services are coming from and get to support the local economy. In our case, you even get to know exactly where your food comes from.

When you buy local you’re making a choice to encourage local vendors, and to fuel their businesses. This has economic benefits from the bottom up, and cuts out middle-men so that more of your consumer dollars actually end up in the vendor’s pocket, and therefore in the local economy.

So why is this such a good thing? Well, it means that your dollars very literally travel shorter distances and spread out less to areas that don’t actually affect you and yours.

For instance, let’s say you eat at a locally-owned restaurant that locally sources its meat and produce. You’re investing money in a local business, which will then turn around and reinvest that money into other local goods and services. Each person or company that makes a decision to invest in their local economy is spreading the benefit to local schools, interests, betterment projects, and families. As the local movement grows, so does the locale.

Let’s look at the other side – buying from larger retailers that do not source locally. Yes, those businesses likely employ locals and pay some local taxes like all vendors do, but that’s pretty much where their direct contributions usually stop. They ship their goods long distances, they are generally owned by a larger company that doesn’t have your particular area’s best interests or culture at heart, and they make decisions for the good of their entire company, not necessarily for the area that their store is in. Are they bad or evil? No! They’re just not… local.

Now for the detail that many people overlook: packaging, shipping, and preservation of food. When local farmers bring meat or produce to sell locally, whether they sell it in stores or at farmer’s markets, they don’t have to spend as much on fuel, employee wages, and preservation of the food via things like refrigerated trucking. This means less overhead cost to bring the food to sell, and more direct repayment of the producer’s efforts. Additionally, lower overhead costs often mean that local vendors and can keep product prices down, which saves you money, too!

Local vendors are also much more able to make their own beliefs and practices a part of their sales and service process, so the buyer is much more likely to be equipped with accurate knowledge about their purchases and consumables. Whether they sell sustainably produced food, natural products, or locally-made crafts, they’re doing something that matters to them personally, and that will translate into their products and your experience with them. When buying locally, you’re buying from someone you know or are at least acquainted with, which is a big deal – transparency and familiarity generally result in better quality products, because families who grow and sell locally have more to lose in terms of reputation, and they personally care more about the individuals who buy their products than a big retailer will.

Some things can’t be purchased from local vendors, that’s just a fact of life.