When farmers sell those piles of glowing tomatoes, squash, apples and pears at the farmers’ markets, and customers buy them, there’s an economic as well as a nutritional return, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Earlier this month the USDA published a report titled Direct and Intermediated Marketing of Local Foods in the United States. The report says that fruit and vegetable farms that sell locally employ 13 full-time workers for every $1 million in sales, while farms that sell to global commodity markets only employ 3 workers per million in sales. So when a customer buys the local product, his/her money supports four times as many jobs as when it goes to international agribiz.
