Yesterday the stock market went down several percentage points. For most Americans the talk is less about the market and more about gasoline prices and egg prices. No matter how you slice the economy right now it is affecting everyone in some way. As you have heard me say in this blog, "to make long-term gains, you must do well when the market is down." This applies today in a very real way.
For those whose portfolios are hurting--rebalance. For those whose grocery and gasoline bills are skyrocketing--buy local. In these precarious economic times, we must think as we haven't before of protecting local businesses, buying from local farmers, and frequenting local eating establishments. After this downturn is over, we still want our local drycleaners, hardware stores, and meat and threes. I am not saying turn away from lower priced discount stores and chains completely but think about the folks with the lower profit margin, the convenience of having a jewelry store or watch repair business in town, and take them your business. This op-ed from Jackson, MI makes the point.
Not just buy local (though that's good),
how about grow local, like, yourself, if only as a beginning?
Apparently, you can also listen to this interview with Michael Pollan as well.
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2031
There are basically two food chains that we have in this country, one a lot bigger than the other. First is a heavily fossil fuel-based food chain, the industrial food chain. The other is a more solar-based food chain, and in that I include things like organic agriculture, pastured meat production. To me, that’s kind of the key distinction. The fossil fuel-based food chain takes about ten calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy. So it’s highly reliant on petroleum, and as a result is largely responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions associated with food production.
Posted by: Jim | June 28, 2008 at 03:19 PM