Most sustainably grown food is also locally grown food. Why shouldn't we be paying for it with local currency?

Local currency is one of many tools we can use to fight corporate globalization, but it is of particular significance in the "food economy."

Sustainable production of food is something which is inherently labor-intensive, since diversified, small-scale production (rather than monocropping) is required, as is avoidance of heavy machinery which can damage the land. Because sustainable food production is labor-intensive, we will never find a way to make its end-product cheap, at least if food producers are to be given a livable wage (part of what makes sustainable food "sustainable.")

Mass production has made food artificially cheap over the past several decades. Household budgets have adjusted accordingly, and few of us could withstand the sort of increase in price that would be necessary to give sustainable food producers a truly living wage. As it is, organic food is out of the reach of many consumers, and most small-scale organic farms can barely survive even with a punishing work-load during the growing season.

One solution is to somehow subsidize the cost of sustainable food, to match the subsidy that conventional farmers take by way of burning up the planet's fossil fuel, poisoning the land with pesticides and herbicides, destroying soil structure, etc. But that requires surplus money from somewhere, whether philanthropic donations to food programs (ever harder to come by in a souring economy) or direct government subsidies (not a strong likelihood in the foreseeable future).

What's needed is a permanent, structural alteration to entire local economies so that money is not so "scarce," and wealth not so concentrated.

Local currencies, like Madison Hours, are designed specifically for just such a function. They circulate only locally to prevent wealth generated by a community from draining away to distant corporate coffers or stockholder's pockets. They can't be lent at interest, one of the mechanisms by which wealth concentrates and credit ("new" money) becomes scarce. And they're denominated in hours-of-labor to encourage equalization of rates-of-pay, a stepping stone toward redistributing wealth in such a way that all of us might be able to enjoy sustainably-grown food -- and growers be given a living wage for it.

Remember: even if you avoid buying corporate food products, you have no control over where your dollars go after they leave your pocket. Dollars are always drawn to where they will return the highest profit, and that may well be in the hands of massively profitable corporations like Cargill or Monsanto or Archer-Daniels-Midland. If we want to choke off the supply of dollars to corporate mega-giants we need to be doing more than just making conscientious purchasing choices -- we need to be using local currency. Only through such grassroots, democratic mechanisms -- along with supporting fair-trade and other sustainability practices -- can we insure that our small role in the marketplace is one which helps distribute the benefits of global commerce equitably amongst the world's people.

While Hours are a limited-use currency at present, they have enormous potential -- after all, any economy is only as strong as the number of people who choose to participate in it. You do have an alternative to the dollar. And you have the power to help re-establish local control over our economy simply by using Hours and encouraging others to join you.