by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Why should you buy local?
There are all too many local, especially family-owned and co-operative, stores these days going out of business due to the low prices of cheaply made items from the massive discount department stores. Do yourself and your neighborhood a favor by supporting local shops. These are your friends, family and neighbors putting their sweat, blood and hard-earned money into their stores. So, therefore, please, pay the extra half-dollar or dollar and buy a quality product from a local shop. Your support helps to keep a real person and their store going.
It is those local shops, the family-owned and real co-operative ones, and not co-operative as in the big huge chain, though member “owned” business called the Co-operative in the UK, are the mainstay of the local economy and they make or break the high street.
Buying local is superior to, when it comes to food, organic, and when I say local then I mean, as far as food is concerned, also locally produced. Don't just walk into your local grocers or greengrocers and buy “organic” green beans from Kenya. That is not buying local, in the real sense.
In fact it should also be that as regards to buying local with regards to products. Here too locally produced should come before any other consideration.
The problem that we do have currently in most developed nations is that very few products are made in our own countries let alone locally and thus we are in somewhat of a dilemma.
Most products that we buy today are made in the Far East, and there, predominately, in China. They are made – though not necessarily the fault of the Chinese – made to last but a very short time and are designed in such a way that most cannot be repaired and thus have to be thrown.
There was a time, not all that long ago either, that most of the products that people would buy and own were made at least in the country if not local and were made to last and could be repaired by means of DIY tinkering or in a local repair shop and there were many of them in any locale.
Local shops and local makers are the backbone of the local community and economy and we should, as members of that local community, support those that are our neighbors, even if not necessarily next door, and who will become our friends if we buy from them.
Shake the hand that grows your food and if it is not that hand then at least the one that buys from the hand that grows it and then sells it in his shop on the high street.
Support local shops, workshops, farms and other businesses and create a real community. It's up to all of us to change society for we are society.
© 2012
