The Economic Benefits of Local Food Dollars to Workers, Farms and Communities

Overall, the articles summarized here show that local food producers spend proportionately more on labor, other variable expenses (including hand tools, supplies, and farm shop power equipment; other unrecorded expenses; and vehicle registration fees) and utilities than do commodity producers; moreover, as scale of production increases, labor’s share of variable costs also increases. An implication of these findings is that local food production may create jobs as well as stimulate proportionately larger spillover impacts on the local economy than nonlocal production. The results show that profitable local food producers exist across all sales classes and market channels, signaling there are viable business models for a variety of farms and ranches to pursue within this niche. Finally, analysis focusing on the most profitable producers sheds light on what types of business models enable producers to flourish in this market segment and provide guidance for future programming and policies.