Let’s Decentralize Wholesale, Not Just Direct Food Sales
September 4th, 2009 By Valerie Imbruce
Cities, now the home to half of the world’s growing population, are poised to redefine how we produce and supply our food. Food is now a social movement, with a particularly urban flavor. Living in southern Vermont for the past year after living in New York City for nearly a decade, I learned that in New York City it is easier to purchase a diet of regionally produced foods than in the food producing regions themselves because of the structure of our food supply chains. Cities are where people are demanding more farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture groups. Cities are where there is a local agriculture craze. But I fear that the politics of “local foods” as the antidote to the ills of “Big Ag” obscures other solutions as well as alienates people who may otherwise be for changes in the structure of agriculture. Read More