Is "Local" Hurting "Developing"?

Eating, buying and drinking local is all the rage these days. With more people moving to cities and more cities offering farmers markets, organic produce and local-only restaurants, people are trying to purchase goods (especially food) grown close to home. There are a myriad reasons why eating local is a good idea: less shipping of food means less fuel wasted, more money into a local economy, "local" is often synonymous with "sustainable" and "organic" with those who seek out these products. However, some critics claim that the focus on locally grown goods is hurting farmers in developing countries.

Generally speaking, farmers in the developing world produce a lot of "organic" goods, simply because they use tried-and-true farming techniques passed down through generations. These goods have, in the recent past, hit the shelves in the developed world with excitement and have started the "fair trade" kick that many "locavores" also rally around. But if people refuse to buy anything that wasn't grown within 100 miles of home, for instance, how will these "fair trade" growers export their products?

Sure, there's a local market for these growers as well, but the price a coffee grower in Africa could get in his local market is nothing compared to the price he could get through export to the U.S. or Europe. Developed nations with a Starbucks on every corner consume tremendous amounts of the cacao, coffee, cotton and even exotic produce that farmers in poorer nations are growing- and generally, consumers would be willing to purchase "fair trade" products if they were easily accessible and reasonably priced. But if someone has limited themselves to a short radius around their home, how do they support these growers?

This is not to say that the spotlight on local products isn't worthwhile- it certainly is. Local communities and economies need help now more than ever and rewarding local growers for sustainable, eco-friendly techniques is definitely an important way to spend one's dollars. But, perhaps, a balance is necessary. Obviously, some items simply aren't produced locally. Here in Chicago, I'm not getting a lot of locally grown coffee or avocados. Strict locavores will simply refuse to buy those products. However, maybe it should be considered just as worthwhile to help out the little guy in Mali as it is to help the little guy in Madison.

Worth considering.

Buying International Development

The handout/hand-up debate has raged for years regarding the best way to help boost the economies and the per capita incomes in developing countries, and it has certainly heated up in the past few years. A couple weeks ago, TIME ran this story which noted that some experts on international aid were criticizing a man's efforts to send t-shirts over to Africa, claiming that such aid actually hurt the people of Africa, rather than helped. Of course, they said, his heart was in the right place, but would-be do-gooders need to consider the best course of action before plunging into the international aid world.

A while back, I noted in a post that the face of charity, as we know it, is changing somewhat from a "handout" model to one of social entrepreneurship. An extension of that, perhaps, is social consumerism. Certainly, buying products to assist a particular population has existed for a long while and has continued to gain steam lately. Large companies like Starbucks offer products that both raise awareness and help the company's public image. Small websites like The Hunger Site and companies like Ten Thousand Villages offer products created by craftsmen in developing countries to take out the middleman and get more money from the consumer to the producer.

Perhaps, then, in addition to aid dollars, developed nations should be investing in the infrastructure necessary for developing countries to gain easier access to world markets. In an Economist article, the example of Good African coffee is given to show that there are solid businesses coming out of Africa and, surely, other poor countries. What entrepreneurs in those places need less than aid money is venture capital, better transportation means to ship their products as inexpensively as possible, the lowering of certain trade barriers, and eventually, consumers in world markets who recognize the brand and quality of their product. This is, I suppose, a combination of a handout and a hand-up, but clearly the old method isn't working and something needs to be done as gaps in world economies continue to widen.