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# Highlighted Food Actions
* [ ] Set up a farmers market
Webpage 
* [ ] Harvest wild foods
Webpage
(See Local Action Pattern)
# Explore the Food topics
* [ ] Food policies
* [ ] Urban farming
* [ ] Agriculture
* [ ] Local markets
* [ ] Fisheries
* [ ] Wild foods
* [ ] Seeds
# The Big Picture
From Localization Action Guide
Of all the localization steps communities can take, rebuilding the local food system is perhaps the most important. That’s because food is something everyone, everywhere, needs every day, which means that even small shifts in our food systems can have far-reaching benefits – environmentally, economically and socially.
Today, most people in the industrialized world depend on food that has been transported thousands of miles – even when much of it could have been produced on nearby farms. In those parts of the global South where people still live in small towns and villages, a greater proportion of the food consumed is local or regional. But even in the South today, the food supply is becoming increasingly globalized and industrialized.
The reason? Because governments almost everywhere use subsidies and regulations to support monocultural production and mass marketing. The huge competitive advantage given to the largest producers and processors can make industrially-produced food that has been shipped from the other side of the world cheaper than food from the farm next door.
The policies supporting global food mean that even well-designed and implemented local initiatives will face strong headwinds. For that reason, grassroots local food initiatives will be more effective – and multiply more widely – if they are accompanied by shifts in local, regional and national policy.
**The benefits of local food**
Communities have good reason to support their local food systems. For one, localizing systematically alleviates a number of environmental problems inherent in the global food system:
* The distance that food travels is greatly reduced, thereby lessening the energy needed for transport, as well as the attendant greenhouse gas emissions. The need for packaging, processing, and refrigeration decreases – and all but disappears when producers sell direct to consumers – thus reducing waste and energy use.
* Farms producing for local or regional markets have an incentive to diversify their production, rather than planting single-crop monocultures. Crop diversification makes organic production more feasible, which in turn reduces the toxic load on surrounding ecosystems.
* Diversified organic farms provide more niches for wildlife to occupy.
* In local food systems, production methods are tailored to particular climates, soils and resources – which means that local food inherently supports the principle of diversity on which ecological farming – and life itself – is based.
Local food provides many other benefits:
* Because the smaller-scale farms are more labor-intensive than giant monocultures, they provide more employment opportunities. In the global South in particular, a commitment to local food would stem the pressures that are driving millions of farmers off the land.
* Local food is good for rural and small-town economies, providing not only more on-farm employment, but supporting the many local businesses that farmers depend upon.
* Food security is also strengthened, because varieties are chosen based on their suitability to diverse locales, not the demands of supermarket chains or the requirements of long-distance transport. This would strengthen agricultural biodiversity.
* Local food is healthier: since it doesn’t need to travel so far, local food is far fresher than global food; and since it doesn’t rely on monocultural production, it can be produced without toxic chemicals that can contaminate food.
This Guide describes many of the steps communities can take to support their local food economy – steps that have been tried and tested in diverse parts of the world. It also describes some of the policy shifts that would help local food producers and marketers thrive.