Local purchasing is a preference to buy locally produced goods and services over those produced more distantly. It is very often abbreviated as a positive goal 'buy local' to parallel the phrase think globally, act locally common in green politics.
On the national level, the equivalent of local purchasing is import substitution, the deliberate industrial policy or agricultural policy of replacing goods or services produced on the far side of a national border with those produced on the near side, i.e. in the same country or trade bloc.
Historically, there have been so many incentives to buy locally that no one had to make any kind of point to do so, but with current market conditions, it is often cheaper to buy distantly-produced goods, despite the added costs in terms of packaging, transport, inspection, retail facilities, etc.. As such, one must now often take explicit action if one wants to purchase locally produced goods.
These market conditions are based on externalized costs, argues local economy advocates. Examples of externalized costs include the price of war, asthma, or climate change, which are not typically included in the cost of a gallon of fuel, for instance.
Most advocates for local economics address contracting and investment, as well as purchasing.
Agricultural alternatives are being sought, and have manifested themselves in the form of farmers’ markets, farmed goods sold through the community cooperatives, urban gardens, and even school programs that endorse community agriculture.
Read more about Local Purchasing: Rationale For Local Purchasing, Alternative Viewpoints
Famous quotes containing the words local and/or purchasing:
“To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self- congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.”
—Clifford Geertz (b. 1926)
“Fashion is the most intense expression of the phenomenon of neomania, which has grown ever since the birth of capitalism. Neomania assumes that purchasing the new is the same as acquiring value.... If the purchase of a new garment coincides with the wearing out of an old one, then obviously there is no fashion. If a garment is worn beyond the moment of its natural replacement, there is pauperization. Fashion flourishes on surplus, when someone buys more than he or she needs.”
—Stephen Bayley (b. 1951)