Shop Locally
Toward a Home-Grown Economy
***
We are old enough to remember the days when a delivery truck brought to many doorsteps bottles of milk, potato chips in a can, and even fresh chicken ready for the fryer. It’s not just nostalgia that summons this memory, but a growing sense of anxiety.
In the face of soaring costs for food shipped long-distance, mom-and-pop retailers getting squashed by big-box stores, and the steady outsourcing of well-paying jobs, communities that continue to rely on distant corporations to meet their needs are likely to grow ever more fragile and fragmented. Ones that try to reclaim a measure of control over their local economies, by contrast, stand a greater chance of creating value that is measured not only in dollars, but also in social capital.
That’s where the delivery truck comes in. In a talk given to 120 Upper Valley business and nonprofit leaders earlier this week, economist Michael Shuman said that one way for local businesses to compete against mail-order and Internet retailers is to provide a way for consumers to buy local products and have them delivered to homes and businesses.
“Amazon says, ‘We’ll get you a book in 24 hours,’ ” Shuman said at the event sponsored by the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, Vital Communities and Local First Vermont. Pointing to a picture of a local deliveryman, he went on, “This guy should be able to get you a book in 24 minutes from the Norwich Bookstore.”
While Shuman’s time estimate may be optimistic, his vision is 20-20. While people like to gripe about the Wal-Martization of the local economy, the best way to fight back is to meet distant competitors on their own terms — and, over time, to demonstrate to shoppers that the value added by local suppliers is about more than the price tag.
Jake Guest of Kildeer Farm in Norwich pointed out that Dartmouth College and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center provide steady employment for a large number of local residents, and that many of those residents (particularly in his neck of the Valley) have the income and inclination to buy local products. “We have the luxury of living in a community where we have this huge economic engine,” Guest said.
Not everyone lives in the affluent Dartmouth orbit, of course. The demand (and disposable income) for organic tomatoes and cage-free local eggs is not as strong in the working-class neighborhoods of Hartford and Lebanon, for instance. But with rising oil prices and global grain shortages pushing up the price of distantly produced food, the cost of local products will likely become more competitive.
Shuman urged Dartmouth and DHMC to lead the way. Since 2006, the college’s food service has made deals with local farmers to put food on students’ plates. Students have enjoyed beef from PT Farm in Haverhill, corn from MacLennan Farm in Windsor and apple cider from Walhowdon Farm in Lebanon. In the most recent fiscal year, Dartmouth Dining Services bought $260,301 worth of food from local producers — about 4 percent of its total purchases.
Ideally, that percentage will rise. And of course, local consumers have other opportunities to spend locally: at the Co-Op and other grocery stores featuring regional food, at farmers markets, at craft galleries and home-grown bike shops. Despite such enterprises, Shuman noted, the local profit from most spending remains small. As long as chain grocery stores are buying lettuce from California, too many dollars are leaking out (and, we might add, too few tasty items are coming in).
We hope that some of the business leaders at this week’s event will do more than chew on Shuman’s observations. Perhaps some of them will band together to create a marketplace for local milk, books, mud boots and other products and services available for delivery to your door. It takes a lot less $4.50-a-gallon diesel to transport items across the Valley than it does across the globe — and it can do a world of good.
Valley News Editorial about 'Local First"
From the May 1, 2008 Valley News editorial page:
Shop Locally
Toward a Home-Grown Economy ***
We are old enough to remember the days when a delivery truck brought to many doorsteps bottles of milk, potato chips in a can, and even fresh chicken ready for the fryer. It’s not just nostalgia that summons this memory, but a growing sense of anxiety.
In the face of soaring costs for food shipped long-distance, mom-and-pop retailers getting squashed by big-box stores, and the steady outsourcing of well-paying jobs, communities that continue to rely on distant corporations to meet their needs are likely to grow ever more fragile and fragmented. Ones that try to reclaim a measure of control over their local economies, by contrast, stand a greater chance of creating value that is measured not only in dollars, but also in social capital.
That’s where the delivery truck comes in. In a talk given to 120 Upper Valley business and nonprofit leaders earlier this week, economist Michael Shuman said that one way for local businesses to compete against mail-order and Internet retailers is to provide a way for consumers to buy local products and have them delivered to homes and businesses.
“Amazon says, ‘We’ll get you a book in 24 hours,’ ” Shuman said at the event sponsored by the Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, Vital Communities and Local First Vermont. Pointing to a picture of a local deliveryman, he went on, “This guy should be able to get you a book in 24 minutes from the Norwich Bookstore.”
While Shuman’s time estimate may be optimistic, his vision is 20-20. While people like to gripe about the Wal-Martization of the local economy, the best way to fight back is to meet distant competitors on their own terms — and, over time, to demonstrate to shoppers that the value added by local suppliers is about more than the price tag.
Jake Guest of Kildeer Farm in Norwich pointed out that Dartmouth College and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center provide steady employment for a large number of local residents, and that many of those residents (particularly in his neck of the Valley) have the income and inclination to buy local products. “We have the luxury of living in a community where we have this huge economic engine,” Guest said.
Not everyone lives in the affluent Dartmouth orbit, of course. The demand (and disposable income) for organic tomatoes and cage-free local eggs is not as strong in the working-class neighborhoods of Hartford and Lebanon, for instance. But with rising oil prices and global grain shortages pushing up the price of distantly produced food, the cost of local products will likely become more competitive.
Shuman urged Dartmouth and DHMC to lead the way. Since 2006, the college’s food service has made deals with local farmers to put food on students’ plates. Students have enjoyed beef from PT Farm in Haverhill, corn from MacLennan Farm in Windsor and apple cider from Walhowdon Farm in Lebanon. In the most recent fiscal year, Dartmouth Dining Services bought $260,301 worth of food from local producers — about 4 percent of its total purchases.
Ideally, that percentage will rise. And of course, local consumers have other opportunities to spend locally: at the Co-Op and other grocery stores featuring regional food, at farmers markets, at craft galleries and home-grown bike shops. Despite such enterprises, Shuman noted, the local profit from most spending remains small. As long as chain grocery stores are buying lettuce from California, too many dollars are leaking out (and, we might add, too few tasty items are coming in).
We hope that some of the business leaders at this week’s event will do more than chew on Shuman’s observations. Perhaps some of them will band together to create a marketplace for local milk, books, mud boots and other products and services available for delivery to your door. It takes a lot less $4.50-a-gallon diesel to transport items across the Valley than it does across the globe — and it can do a world of good.