19 September 2008
Small Businesses Make Local Economies More Sustainable
Community-based firms rely on local supplies, clean energy and fair wages
San Francisco — When Gregg Higgins opened a restaurant in downtown Portland, Oregon, in 1994, local farmers were not always able to provide him with the foods he needed to create a menu based on seasonal, local ingredients.
“I’d been always in trouble because I wanted to buy from too many people,” he told America.gov.
Higgins joined with other local chefs to create Farm-Chef Connection, a business-to-business network, which let them work directly with growers to fine-tune supplies.
The Connection is among a growing number of small and medium-size enterprises across the United States that emphasizes support for local business and communities as well as the environment.
They want to be called "local living economies" because, as a Salt Lake City-based group put it, they work to bring back or preserve “the choice, texture and vibrancy of our local neighborhoods.”
IS SMALL BEAUTIFUL AGAIN?
In the book The Small-Mart Revolution, Michael Shuman argues that trends such as rising energy and transportation costs, climate change, inefficiencies of global distribution systems and consumers’ desire for more personalized services will help small businesses face competition from global corporations and large retail chains.
By joining together, small businesses can counter the market power of giant corporations, proponents of new localism say. As small firms are more likely to invest in a local economy than their larger competitors, local businesses can contribute to a community’s development by involving more local partners, creating jobs and offering fair wages to employees.
Businesses that make up local living economies range from organic farms and mom-and-pop stores to independent media, manufacturing operations and green energy projects.
Some networks work with other nonprofit groups and local governments on strategies for economic development, while others focus on marketing campaigns and consumer education, according to Ann Bartz, executive director of the San Francisco-based Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a support group for the local networks.
Many groups emphasize "local first" efforts aimed at promoting local selling and buying. For example, for the week of September 15, Sustainable Connections, based in Whatcom County in Washington state, urged local residents to eat fresh local food. Other groups stress closer ties with renewable energy suppliers and preserving natural landscapes. All abide by the principles of paying fair wages to employees, conserving energy and reducing waste.
During the past four years, BALLE’s membership has increased from several hundred to nearly 20,000 businesses grouped in about 60 networks. More important, says Don Shaffer, who ran BALLE until 2007, is growth of consciousness about the value of buying food locally and relying on locally owned businesses to satisfy other needs.
“Consumers not merely support the idea in general but increasingly vote with their dollars for local supplies,” he told America.gov.
Higgins said that in the Portland area, local farming has changed dramatically and become the envy of the outside world.
“Chefs from around the world and around the country who come here are amazed by the product quality and diversity,” he said.
Other efforts also have been recognized. Several networks received awards from federal agencies for renewable energy initiatives.
TO TRADE OR NOT TO TRADE?
James Post, a management professor at Boston University, says local living economies are “connected to a theme of attempted social innovation, which is well grounded in the U.S. history.”
By embracing and protecting such collective assets as the natural environment and unspoiled landscape, the living economy groups try to transcend the imperfect workings of the market, he told America.gov.
Post said new localism can be driven to some extent by skepticism about byproducts of globalization.
But Shaffer explained that the concept of local economies does not exclude international trade.
“The idea is to make it a fair trade between small firms,” he said.
Bartz told America.gov the local business networks have no desire to deny development opportunities to communities in other nations that rely on exports.
“Our vision is a global economy of linked local living economies,” she said.
In that vision, people and communities first benefit from products and services being traded across their boundaries rather than across the globe.
Behind the movement, Post said, is a desire to create products and services for people whom local entrepreneurs know and understand in an environment they appreciate and want to sustain.
“You substitute something locally sustainable for something that may be globally more efficient but is a bit removed from human relations,” he said.
Judy Wicks, who runs a popular restaurant called the White Dog Café in Philadelphia, believes her customers come not only for organic dishes but also for “a sense of community and for a chance to be aligned with something greater than themselves.”
