Yes!!
Support your local small stores and markets!
This is going to be crucial to our survival and wellfare.
In the Long Emergency, which we have entered, all giganticism (big corporations, big box stores, big military, big buildings, big cities, etc.) needs to be abandoned and dismantled in favor of a downscaled living arrangement.

See this quotation from James H. Kunstler's blog of August 8, 2011:

"There is a welling recognition that the dice have been cast and the world has rolled snake eyes. The casino is on fire and a flash flood is boiling down the strip. It's no fun running to the exits only to find the revolving doors already eyeball deep in dirty water. America gibbers to itself but nobody has a clue. I'll try to help: this is a compressive financial and economic contraction (one is money, the other is activity). Late-summer storm that it is, it looks to be intensifying. Everything that's super-big is going down sooner or later. The exact sequence of failures is unpredictable. But you can be sure Nature is telling you to get local, get smaller, get finer, downscale, solidify your friendships, and drop your stupid grandiose fantasies about running WalMart on algae. This is change you don't have to believe in, because it is about to jump up and bite you on the lips."

Grow some of your own food!!! You can grow spinach and salad greens through the winter in South-facing windows or really sunny E. and W. windows.

Besides, produce from California and W. Mexico and so on is likely to be contaminated with radioactivity from Fukushima. Don't add to your body's burden any more than you can help.

Start planning a garden for next spring if you have even a small patch of ground. Get some old wooden boxes good for nothing else, drill holes in the bottom, line them up in the yard, purchase ORGANIC soil or use your yard's soil with ORGANIC amendments and get growing. Much more efficient than the old way of simple rows, which waste the ground between rows. With raised beds, you can plant the whole thing. Plant as much as you can.

This is critical to our survival. Bands of marauding hungries will be roaming the land at some point - make sure you and your family can survive.

And be certain you can protect yourself and your family.

Yes, gardens, not lawns!

Yes, yes, and yes.

Local Produce, Local Markets.

Regional Produce. Regional Markets.

Global Produce Global Markets.

Each have their place in a stable (relatively) and sustainable system.

Rip up that lawn, plant those trees, shrubs, and vegetables.

Local Resiliency with Global networks of support.

All super-important.

But one caveat:

Many "Farmer's Markets" sell much more than just produce and value-added farm goods. Prepared foods for market-goers and local food preparation businesses (like cheesemongers or bakers) are not the only other stalls at most markets either. Handcraft-sellers and non-handcraft "trinket" or "doo-dad" sellers/re-sellers are also a big section of many markets.

My own -very, very- small city's market is only operational on Sunday's in the Summer and Early Fall, 4 out of 5 farm stalls are agribusinesses looking for a new niche, and the local foodies and artisans are matched stall-for-stall with the trinket sellers. The trinket sellers have been the main growth this year.

The growth of farm stalls, producer stalls, food stalls of all stripes, handicraft stalls, and other local interest stalls at "Farmer's Markets" are signs of growth-toward-stability on that front.

The growth of trinket-seller stalls at "Farmer's Markets" is not. It is the same as the growth of garage sales and street-beggars. It is a sign of breakdown in the current growth-at-all-costs paradigm, but with yet no new skills or opportunities in the emerging growth-toward-stability paradigm.

We need to be careful to tell the difference in our analysis of this.

But in our struggle toward the new way, this is an encouraging and -hopefully invigorating- development (even the trinket-sellers, really). ;)

-matti.

Yes, I just went to a farmer's market today.... For 38.00 I got
Watermelon
blackberries (onsale end of day)
peaches (lots-on sale end of day)
tomaotes4 great big ones
a huge bag of onions, like 10lbs
huge plums, maybe 2-2.5 lbs
two big purple onions
two peppers one red one yellow
plus, I had a great converstion with the woman and girl running it.... talking about family reunions, our broccli growing, animals eating out plants etc.

There is some good info here. Rodale has done good work. I'm glad to see the organic focus, as it helps greatly in sorting out how to buy well, with verification!

Farmers markets and local foods generally seem to have garnered a large amount of foundation money, whereas policy work, especially the most controversial policy work (justice + organizing) seems to be on the shorter side. this is a different angle on the question of the "unlevel playing field." Is there not also more government money for farmers markets than ever before? There's also an issue of the difference between the consumer side and the farmer side. Most farmers markets are still so small that only a few farmers can supply most of the product, for example meat. They really aren't getting big enough to help a very large percentage (even 10%) of farmers anytime soon. for example, I suspect that 1 family-sized farm here could convert to serve the farmers markets in Cedar Rapids (city of 100,000), and double the amount of meat available. That oversupply could then drive down the selling price below costs. In fact, however, there are hundreds of farms in the Cedar Rapids region. That's not to say that this wealth creation and assistance isn't all a good thing. It's just still tiny, from a farmers perspective. Small farmers markets don't have enough customers for a full time farmer selling meat. They're more for people who are the equivalent of the farm wife selling eggs on the side. The statistic says 100,000 farmers sell to farmers markets, but for most that's surely a tiny % of their income. As all of this changes, the question will be: are we going to replace supermarkets, grain elevators, livestock sale barns, etc.? What are the steps to building or rebuilding this whole other system? Will that happen, or is there a limit along the way (how many consumers will go to farmers markets vs small increases in the number of farmers) or is this something trendy? What will be the response of big agribusiness? Will they try to take it over? Will they succeed? Will something in between be created?

Unfortunately, like almost everyone else (mainstream media, food progressives, hunger orgs., conservatives,) Leah Zerbe misunderstands farm subsidies, and gives a reverse analysis, the opposite of the basic political facts, though I agree with her on some of the farming systems description (ie. some things happening are very bad, such as CAFOs, and/or never needed to happen, such as pesticides). I understand that the very partial facts (& illogical analysis) that is widespread supports Leah, not me, so I'll explain below, for anyone who wants to be sure they're not advocating in favor of bad farming systems based upon the widespread internet/mainstream media myths that have infected the progressive food movement, leading to regressive advocacy.

Perhaps the 1st missing facts to add are farm prices. The article refers to $13 billion in farm subsidies, apparently over a recent period, and it's presented as this is something favorable, not bad. But there is no mention of the total, of farm prices PLUS subsidies, so a key piece needed for logical analysis is missing. It's assumed, implied, that the subsidies are on top of adequate market prices, with no data to establish that. Hey, isn't it too obvious to need any data! Actually no. The assumptions are, in fact false. This enormous whacko set of facts of all of these farm subsidies has another, very different, correct interpretation, when the necessary supplementary facts are added in. In fact farm prices were lowered by Congress, and then after 8 years of that, some subsidies were given back to farmers as partial compensation, then prices were lowered more and more, and some more partial compensations were given. Subsidies plus market prices, however, have only been a small fraction of the original prices. For example, recent HIGHER yearly average corn prices have been in the $4 range, while the previous price standard (before the lowering started in 1953) would be around $10, and subsidies in no way bring the total back to what it was. Overall, corn subsidies have only been about 1/6 of the corn price reductions. The correct analysis, therefore, is that Congress penalized farm commodities by a lot more than $13 billion, and in the process, enabled CAFOs to also take the value added of livestock away from farmers, reducing flexibility (the livestock option) and forcing farmers to cut back on resource conserving crop rotations and buy more inputs from the likes of Monsanto (rotations with small feedgrains and clover reduce the need for pesticides and harsh fertilizers, but don't make sense without livestock).

Note: corn is not very "price responsive" at all, so prices are usually low without price floors. What Congress did was to drastically lower and eliminate nonsubsidy New Deal price floors at the request of corporate lobbyists, especially the corn etc. buyers. Then, starting in 1961, Congress invented subsidies to try to deflate the massive farm protests against this of the 1960s, 70s, 80s & 90s.

In general, Congress didn't "subsidize" "industrial farming." Congress penalized diversified family farming, even as the US lost money on farm exports for decades, even to the "evil empire" of Communism. Meanwhile, OPEC chose to raise, (not drastically lower like US farm policy and farm prices), oil prices.