Strategies: Think locally, act locally? Give it a try in this case

— -- Want to help your own and fellow local small businesses? I've got an appetizing suggestion: buy and eat more "local" food.

Slow Food Nation – a celebration of local, sustainable food – took place over Labor Day weekend in San Francisco. I had three deliciously educational days, where I learned about the positive effects of buying and eating locally-grown or raised food. (And I ate a lot of some simply scrumptious food.)

Yes, I know, this sounds like one of those arugula-and-goat cheese fads for yuppies. And, I admit, there are a lot of those kinds of folks in the local-food movement. But the major beneficiaries are small businesses. First, the small farmers, ranchers, or fishermen from whom the food is purchased. But all local small businesses benefit when dollars stay in a community instead of being sent overseas or across country to distant suppliers.

Indeed, my own interest in local food comes, in large part, because of my commitment to small business. That's because many of the same reasons to buy local food are the same for buying any local product or service:

• Sustains local economies

• Supports small businesses

• Reduces reliance on fossil fuels and makes us more energy independent

• Reduces greenhouse gases

• Reduces reliance on foreign suppliers

• Increases our diversity and health

Food in American society has been like virtually every other product.

"Post World War II," says Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, "farms became national. Once New Jersey was the 'garden state' for New York, … but supermarkets wanted to deal with fewer suppliers. (That became possible) with cheap fossil fuels, interstate highways, refrigerated trucks."

The same – minus the refrigerated trucks – could be said for virtually every product or service. Large retailers and corporations wanted to consolidate their purchasing by turning to large, typically non-local, even overseas, suppliers.