Dan Lass Resource Economics

Many parts of the United States have seen a surge in local food interest during the past decade, as reflected in part by the rapid growth of farmers ’ markets, community supported agriculture (CSA) farms and other food purchasing directly from farmers. According to U.S. agricultural census data, real direct sales, in 2002 dollars, increased 23 % between 1997 and 2002, to over $812 million (USDA, 2004). Such direct agricultural sales are the most obvious indicator of local food production and use. Hundreds of initiatives and projects promoting local food have been implemented around the country, including farm-to-school programs, local restaurant fare, and local harvest dinners. The name “localvore ” has been adopted by the strongest proponents of local food, who actively seek to base their diets on local production. On the consumer side, interest in local foods has been stoked by popular literature like Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007), which described her family’s year-long experiment in growing and eating local foods in Virginia. In Eat Here, Halweil (2004) both related how traditional food supply systems went global, and made a multi-faceted case for relocalization. Pirog et al (2001) calculated the travel distance of selecte