Local purchasing

Abstract: Introduction No Place Like Home The Perils of Mobility The Triumphs of Economists An Emerging Countermovement A Way Forward 1 Place Matters Bad People and Bad Civics The Science of Efficiency Free Trade vs Community A New Economics of Place 2 Needs-Driven Industries Import Replacement Food Industries Energy Industries Natural-Resources Industries Materials Industries Beyond Necessities 3 Community Corporations A Taxonomy of American Business Engines of Self-Reliance New Models Empowerment Through Ownership 4 Financing the Future Bankers vs Communities Community-Development Financial Institutions Unconventional Loans Locally Owned Equity Pension Reinvestment The Role of Public Policy 5 Pro-Community Local Governance The Virtues of Localism Local Reinvestment Local Purchasing Selective Privatization Local Hiring Local Taxes A Question of Power 6 Bringing Home Power, Not Bacon Real Home Rule A New Approach to Trade Rethinking Corporations Neighborhood Banking Community Lobbying 7 Making History Ten Steps Toward Community Self-Reliance The New Global Village The Lilliputian Strategy Appendix

Abstract: In the Himalayas, food security of communities primarily depends on local agricultural productivity and food purchasing power. Subsistence agriculture, which is forest based, constitutes the main source of rural food and livelihoods. However, due to constraints of terrain and climate, agricultural productivity is low, resulting in large food deficits and leading to a considerable proportion of the adult male population migrating from the region in search of employment and livelihoods. Remittances from the migrants and local off-farm employment contribute to community purchasing power which may be used to buy food from the open market and government controlled Public Distribution System (PDS). Depletion of natural resources, changing climatic conditions, the recent economic recession and sharply fluctuating food prices have not only decreased local food production but also reduced employment opportunities locally as well as outside the area, rendering the entire region highly vulnerable to food insecurity. This study, which was carried out in the Upper Kosi Catchment in Kumaon Himalaya, India, revealed that not only has annual agricultural productivity declined by nearly 125 Kg per ha (25 %) during the last 30 years, causing an annual food deficit of 1883 tonnes (65 %) and massive decline in per capita food production, but that local off-farm employment opportunities in different traditional rural sectors has also declined. Furthermore, the recent economic recession and the resultant job losses for migrants has decreased incoming remittances by 20 %–25 %, causing the loss of local purchasing power and posing a serious threat to food security. Those particularly affected are marginal and smallholder farmers, and landless households, which mainly include socially backward communities and families with very low incomes. It is therefore imperative that a community oriented framework for the management of land, water and forest resources is planned and implemented in this region, together with the generation of viable means of off-farm employment at the local level

Abstract: Introduction In southern Ontario, as in many other regions, the histories of farming and rural communities are closely intertwined. During much of the twentieth century, family farming served as the primary engine of local rural economies and largely defined rural society (Fuller 1990; Smithers and Joseph 1999). Rural settlements provided the social and economic infrastructure needed to support farm businesses and farm households, and farmers in turn focused much of their economic and social life towards these places. Consequently, there existed not only a sense of shared progress but also a tangible interdependency that formed a foundation for many mutually supportive interactions. Today, both family farming and rural communities in Canada are changing in response to myriad forces, ranging from the local to the global, and many of the once common and well understood connections between these two spheres of rural life have been lost and replaced by new ones: interactions that all too frequently take the form of contestation and conflict (Smithers and Joseph 1999; Joseph et al. 2001). What are the broad contours of this change? On the farm side, there has been a well-documented shift to more industrialised forms of food production. Traditional systems of farming have been replaced by systems of production characterised by a high degree of mechanisation and intensification where capital and technology and other purchased inputs have substituted for labour (National Research Council 1989; Troughton 1997; Marsden 1998). Additionally, the geography of commodity marketing and input procurement has been fundamentally altered. The highly productive farms that dominate Canada's agricultural system are increasingly linked with agribusiness, government (through agricultural policy and programes) and financial institutions for their markets and critical inputs (Wallace 1992). Hence, they are less dependent upon communities as places of exchange and service provision. Indeed, many of the traditional and more supportive forms of interaction between farm and community, such as local marketing of agricultural products or local purchasing, either no longer occur or are relegated to a less significant role. Such developments have led to the assertion that the critical relationships in agriculture are now more often vertical than horizontal (Marsden 1998). On the community side, the pace and scope of change has been equally significant. Increasingly, rural settlements serve functions and supply services that extend well beyond agriculture and food production. The resulting 'new' rural economy may be characterised as a mosaic in which agriculture represents but one of many economic activities (Van den Bor et al. 1997) and where the preeminence of farming as the foundation of the rural economy is no longer assured. Similarly, urbanisation of the countryside through non-farm residential development and the dispersion of economic and social activities from urban core areas have altered the social fabric of many rural areas (Bryant and Johnston 1992; Marsden 1998). Attention is now being drawn increasingly to shifting power relations among and between rural residents and how these find expression in public policy and manifest themselves in different community development strategies (Bryden 1994; Gertler 1994; DeLind 1995; Joseph et al. 2001). Against this backdrop of long-term change, a variety of farming 'models' are appearing in Ontario and elsewhere. While intensive production-oriented agriculture is one possible direction, a range of other possibilities exist and are, in evidence, in many other jurisdictions (Bowler et al. 1996). Similarly, many of the generally understood and somewhat bucolic interactions between farm and non-farm actors are being redefined. Specific instances of new economic development of land-use conflict provide insights relating to particular places and events, but this is a partial view indeed. …

Abstract: The social environment in which the retailer conducts business is not often measured for its fundamental influences on consumers’ local purchasing behavior This study, using social capital theory as a theoretical framework, examines whether reciprocal actions exist between community members as consumers and retailers and if these actions are persuasive in predicting the economic activity regarded as consumer inshopping Determinants of inshopping behavior are analyzed from the community member’s perspective in a study of the rural community marketplace The sample population consisted of consumers living in two rural Iowa communities with populations less than 10,000, agricultural-based economies, and retail mixtures of locally owned and operated small-sized businesses as well as national chain and discount organizations Structural equation modeling estimated the causal patterns among consumers’ attachment to community with two endogenous variables regarding reciprocity and inshopping behavior Findings offer supporting evidence that social relationships aid in predicting rural marketplace relationships