Indiana Local Food Stimulus Package

The following post is shared directly from Victoria Wesseler's Going Local Web Site.

The Indianapolis Winter Farmers Market encourage each of you to support this effort with your purchasing power to buy local, and we are delighted to be able to help you eat fresh and straight from the growers and producers through the winter months.

February 25, 2009

Improve the Economy with My Indiana Local Food Stimulus Package

If you didn't attend the recent February 21 educational event hosted by The Food and Growers Association of Laughery Valley and Environs, you missed a great program. After spending the day with the folks in the Batesville area, I left with a whole new level of appreciation for the incredible efforts that they are making to enhance their local food system.

At that meeting, I had the opportunity to share some thoughts with the participants about the importance of reconnecting with our local Indiana food system. Once again I made an impassioned plea for what I am now calling my Indiana Local Food Stimulus Package noting that if half the families in Indiana shifted $6.25 of their current weekly food budget to the purchase of Indiana grown or produced local food that this effort would provide an annual contribution of 300 million dollars into the local Indiana economy. Impressive? Yes, but that's not the final number. Studies consistently show that a dollar spent locally will multiply itself by 3 to 5 times making the actual economic impact of that one dollar in the local community where it was spent far greater than a buck. (Click here for an article that I recently wrote about that subject: Download As the Dollar Turns Wesseler )

Initially it may be impossible to believe but, with a subtle shift in our food spending habits, we can make a $900 million to $1.5 billion economic impact on Indiana in one year. No government handouts, no Senate sub-committee hearings, no bailouts, no loans. Just real people buying real food getting real results.

In these trying times, many of us feel powerless to do anything to improve the economic situation in which we find ourselves. This is something we all can do. When do we start? How about now? Let's get this ball rolling, please send this post to everyone you know.

The Indianapolis Winter Farmers Market hopes you will share this post with everyone you know, just as we have shared it with you. Thank you to Victoria Wesseler for her research and dedication in presenting this plan!