Editor:
It is vitally important that consumers begin to understand the value of paying a farmer a fair price for his/her efforts. There is great value in the multiplier effect family-based agriculture brings to its community, where money spent locally circulates in the community supporting many other businesses.
Local farmers care more about the land and provide ecosystem services that benefit everyone. Local farmers are more socially conscious and support our community’s well-being on many levels. Large corporate farms externalize many of their costs to keep their prices down.
Consumers pay or these externalized costs in other ways — pollution, dangerous chemicals, loss of biodiversity, low wages, rural poverty, loss of family farms, loss of access to land by common people, loss of soils and soil health, increasing dependence on fossil fuels and etc.
Family-based agriculture has always been a foundation of our local way of life. It needs a community to sustain it.
Cindy Dvergsten
Arriola
