More on local infrastructure rebuilding

posted 18 April 2008 by Paula | link to this

tags: farmers, farms, infrastructure

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A couple days ago I noted my article published at StartupNation extolling the reasons why “buy local” offers entrepreneurs and small businesses opportunties that are shriveling in other parts of the economy — namely, that infrastructure gaps need to be filled to meet the burgeoning demand for local goods.

In the same vein, Tom Philpott over at Grist.org has an excellent blog entry that goes into some depth regarding the current state of market infrastructure for farmers. Philpott observes that mid-sized farms, those most able to ramp up to meet demand for local foods, do not have the means of getting their goods to market:

The more I think about it, the more the question seems to come down to supply and infrastructure. No matter what happens to industrial-food prices, “good, clean, and fair” food (to use Slow Food’s rhetoric) won’t conquer the American diet until we produce more of it and have the means for distributing it….

The problem, rather, is market structure. In the United States today, there are essentially two marketing channels for farms. You can sell your produce directly to consumers, through farmers markets and CSAs; or you can sell it to gigantic corporate buyers that have tremendous leverage to set price. The former model works well enough for small farms; the latter works best for large operations tightly focused on one or two crops — mostly corn and soy.

This is an excellent analysis and rings true with what I’ve seen here in agricultural Pennsylvania. I definitely recommend reading Philpott’s article.

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