I buy locally when I can. Everything I consume is produced locally if practical for the time of year factory farming is not a good idea unless it's in a building.and IMO growing any kind of plant product to feed an automobiles gas tank is downright f** stupid.

My grandparents owned a dairy farm that died. That being said, working there as a kid was the worst jobs I ever had. I would much rather do what I am doing now, ( and it's more pay anyways ) than farm. On top of that, many small farms are much dirtier and rather inefficient when compared to the large corporate farms, which means lower food prices when bought from large farms, which is the major driving factor behind the dying of small family farms. It's a classic economy of scale problem driven by advances in farming technology and farm management techniques.

I have seen this first hand- during the great depression feed prices nearly tripled in just 2 years. In 2008 during the financial crisis I remember my grandpa and dad looking at records and realizing that they were almost paying between 3 and 4 times as much as they were spending in 1998, with only a small increase in livestock. The 2008 financial crisis was worse than the great depression in a lot of ways, but it didn't have the same lasting effects because the government did nothing and allowed the economy to stabilize.

How important is eating....?