No Coercion Exploring the idea of a stateless society.

Does it Make Sense to Buy Local?

We all learn in Econ 101 that there's nothing inherently beneficial about buying locally produced goods. That's not to say that you can't derive happiness from supporting local growers or that you can't prefer the taste of a local strawberry to one from the side of the country, but those are just personal preferences that have nothing to do with the actual economics of localization. Nevertheless, there's a growing trend toward buying local among those who consider themselves environmentally and socially conscious.

Over at Coyote Blog, Warren Meyer talks about some of the significant reasons NOT to push for localization of markets: Sustainability Through Poverty. I especially like his first point:

It doesn't work.  The total energy used for transport, say of food products, is a small percentage of the total energy used in the total production process.  The energy transportation budget is generally smaller than efficiency gains from scale or from optimizing location.  For example, a wheat farm in Arizona on 50 acres is going to use a lot more energy (and water, and fertilizer, and manpower) than a wheat farm on a thousand acres in North Dakota.

To elaborate on that a little, I would say that people who think they're "reducing their carbon footprint" by buying local are most likely mistaken. If, as Warren points out above, more energy is used to produce food in a nearby location that's less suited to such production than another place far away, you're actually causing MORE carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere when you buy local. Increased use of energy is reflected in higher prices. So it probably makes more sense to buy whatever is cheapest if you want to cut back on your carbon dioxide contribution. Just something to think about.

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