Buy local has a lot of impact in supporting your neighbors as well as recycling profits. Profits stay locally and growers then spend their money in local stores, banks and yoga studios.
Buying from Trader Joe's of Whole Foods takes the profits out of an area for good and only marginal income is recirculated in the form of very low wages to hourly employees. {i started calling it Whole Fools after the elitist Health Care statements of owner John Mackey were made.}
Trickle-down economist types have a lot of information about the wealth effects of all this, but the decimation of local economies is not their concern. Efficient markets usually mask the devastation of local economies and individual lives. Theirs is a view from 50,000 feet saying the weather is sunny while it's very different here on Earth.
