Local Food
Bringing the Food Economy Home

Throughout the world, agriculture is in crisis. Farmers are going bankrupt in record numbers, and the rural communities of which they are an integral part are being drained of life.

Meanwhile, international trade in food is booming. Every year, the distance between producers and consumers rises, to the point where the average American meal has now travelled more than 1,500 miles before it arrives on the dinner table.

These two trends are directly linked. The globalisation of the food economy, while enriching a small number of giant 'agribusinesses', is undermining the welfare of everyone else. What's more, it is a major contributor to increasing CO2 emissions, and therefore to climate change.

We urgently need to move in precisely the opposite direction - towards shortening the links between farmers and consumers. Such a shift would bring back diversity to land that has been all but destroyed by chemical-intensive monocropping, provide much-needed jobs at a local level, and help to rebuild community. Moreover, it would allow farmers to make a decent living while giving consumers access to healthy, fresh food at affordable prices.

Local food is good for the South too! Despite what the multinational corporations would like us to believe, we are not helping people in the less industrialised parts of the world if we encourage them to grow food for export rather than for themselves.

The Programme

ISEC's Local Food Programme aims to raise public awareness of these issues, in order to lay the foundations for community action and political change.

We organise regular meetings - from local workshops to international conferences - and have written extensively for a wide range of audiences. We are also very active in promoting farmers' markets, vegetable box schemes and other forms of community supported agriculture.

• Our report, 'Bringing the Food Economy Home', provides hard facts and figures to back up the arguments for local food. Written in an accessible style, it also serves as a valuable introduction to the economics and politics of food for the general reader.
  
  
• Our newest publication (2004), Ripe for Change: Rethinking California's Food Economy, argues for the need to localize the food economy in California. Following the general analysis laid out in Bringing the Food Economy Home, this report looks at California's food system from seed to table, accounting for many of the hidden costs of what is often assumed to be a highly successful model - one which is being emulated by other regions and countries around the world.
  
  
• In 1993, we wrote 'From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture'. The book has been widely used for educational purposes in the UK and USA, and a new edition was published in 2000.
  
  
• We are bringing the local food message directly to the public with our Local Food Roadshow. The Roadshow outlines both a critique of the globalisation of the food economy and a compelling argument for shortening the distance between farmers and consumers. For more information on our Local Food Roadshow in the UK, click here. For information on our Local Food Toolkit in the US, click here.