Keep It A Small World

Buy Local

By Larry Dutra
Last week, I was reading the Los Angeles Times (yes, a real newspaper!) and was surprised to learn that one of the best-selling “albums” in the country had not been released yet as a CD. On the strength of downloads alone, the Decemberists’ The Hazards of Love had cracked the Top 20. This is more evidence of paradigm-shifting, market-shaping forces occurring with startling velocity. Heck, my first sentence here managed to reference three things (newspapers, albums and CDs) that will likely be relics in a few short years.

In the wake of our historic economic downturn, much has been written about the impact on American’s purchasing behavior. We are widely reported to be consuming less. I would characterize this as a reflex to market conditions that we can’t control. For some, the reflex is involuntary; they want to spend but they’ve lost their jobs and, thus, no longer have money. For others, the reflex not to spend is probably largely fear-based. But, given that consuming less is indeed reflexive one way or the other, logic would also suggest that our consumptive behavior will roar back when the economic winds turn and our fear subsides. If so, there would be no long-term fundamental change in our consumer mentality. If that’s the case, it would be too bad. I’m a realist, though, and I know that we have short memories. Note how sales of hybrid cars, which were all the rage when gas was $4 a gallon, have dramatically cooled. Last month, Toyota’s sales numbers showed a 55 percent decline for the Prius brand since March ’08. Yes, fewer people are buying any type of car perhaps but I also think Prius sales have stalled because the price of gas is back down to the $2 range.

Even given our fickleness, though, I am not entirely pessimistic that real consumer change can take place. For in addition to being forced to consume less currently, many of us have been voluntarily consuming differently. Take my examples of downloaded music, and the demise of newsprint in favor of online content. Consider how vastly more environmentally friendly those distribution mechanisms are for the ecology of our planet. For the delivery of music, a plastic disc, plastic case and the cost of fuel to transport it (and the consumer) to a retail store is replaced by bits and bytes of digital music being carried over the Internet to your MP3 player. (If you were to purchase that same CD from Amazon, the fuel and exhaust from your personal vehicle would be replaced by the UPS truck.) While I love reading the daily paper, the environmentalist in me sees the extraordinary waste in a delivery system that begins with clear-cutting trees, ends with private delivery via automobile and in between generates no small amount of toxic waste. But the emergence of these highly efficient new distribution mechanisms (which may lead to the demise of conventional music and newspaper delivery) have been driven more by convenience and personal preference. The environmental benefits are bonuses that just happen to come along with the package.

Out there beyond changes in consumer behavior generated by economic sanctions and/or motivated by new technology and convenience is also a whole new emerging set of changes that we are making more deliberately and more consciously.
The public’s growing concerns about carbon footprints, toxic substances finding their way into our food supply and packaged goods have engendered a whole new discussion about not only consuming less, but consuming differently. This new paradigm shows us not only how we can consume less, but also how we can consume more intelligently so as to conserve resources and improve the quality of life on our crowded planet. The key is a more keen awareness of where and how what we consume is produced.

There may be no better example of this than how we shop for the food we eat, since there is no indication that we’ll be able to download our dinner from the Internet, at least not in our lifetime. Let’s say you are shopping for fruit. You are presented with a plentiful choice of fruits from all over the world. Choice is good. But not all choices are equally good for our country, or our planet. Although the exact numbers are subject to debate, there is a difference, in terms of environmental impact, between the cost of an orange imported to the U.S. from Australia in the off-season versus an in-season apple from Washington State. Just consider the shipping. Transporting the produce from the southern hemisphere (by jet or container ship) is geometrically more environmentally costly than from the Pacific Northwest. And, besides, purchasing produce from elsewhere supports a grower in a foreign country over a grower in our own. If your quest for oranges leads you to a farmer’s market patronizing a grower near your home, that’s even better. Researchers at the Iowa State University have reported that food miles associated with grocery store items are 27 times higher than those for goods bought from local sources such as farmer’s markets.

This same way of thinking can be extended to virtually everything we consume at the market: beer, wine, cheese, meat – even bottled water (though I don’t advocate consuming bottled water).

First and foremost, consume less (it’s axiomatic that if we consume less, we conserve more). Then look to see how many little decisions you can make. Buying local, for example, may seem inconsequential at first but if you multiply the impact of the “buy local” mindset by 300 other million U.S. consumers, you can begin to appreciate how this small change can fundamentally benefit our little blue planet and our individual communities. Many people say local food tastes better or is nutritionally better for you. I think it’s kind of fun to scope out local resources. But here’s the biggest perk of buying local: it just makes you feel better.

By day, Larry Dutra is a purveyor of fine wine (read: big shot in the wine business — just kidding Larry!). When not sipping, he is indulging his passion for parenting (he and his wife of 27 years have two sons, aged 18 and 12). Larry also digs organic vegetable gardening, live music and physical activity in the great outdoors.

Want to buy local? Check out Local Harvest for a farmer’s market, family farms and other sources of local food near you.