USDA’s ‘Amber Waves’ looks at local food

Amber Waves, the quarterly magazine the U.S. Department of Agriculture puts out on the economics of food and farming, focuses on local food in its December issue.

Drawing heavily from a long report the department's Economic Research Service put out in May, it hits some of the themes we've been focusing on here at Ground Level:

Interest is growing in local food, although it remains a small part of the overall food economy. The definition of "local" varies substantially and for many people includes factors unrelated to distance.

The Amber Waves piece traces the historical arc of local food, noting that a century ago almost all our food was "local" and that processing meant canning, dehydrating, salting, or smoking. Refrigeration and transportation improvements after World War 2 changed everything. A reaction to that change started in the late 1960s and now is enjoying a surge of participation.

Here's one piece of evidence, showing the faster-than-average increase in the sales of produce by farmers directly to consumers:

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The magazine also includes a piece on the University of Minnesota-led research on food supply chains that we've written about here before.

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