What are local foods? If you do not know your local producer, then how can you know whether the product you are purchasing is local? These questions are at the heart of an emerging debate in the United States about authenticity and the value of local eating. In the United States, from the menus of its elite restaurants, to urban farmer markets, to the procurement strategy of its largest corporation, ''local'' is fast becoming an important food category. Several distinct forces drive its popularity and yet, in the absence of certain credence attributes to assure what indeed is local, its future is uncertain. This article explores what defines ''local'' and how the term is protected in trade. It suggests that intellectual property protection is underdeveloped to foster local food product designations. Cases in the United States illustrate that some viable mechanisms do exist to ensure the specific provenance of a food but that in large interconnected markets these mechanisms present some notable challenges for both producers and consumers. In its review of different approaches to protecting and fostering local food systems, the article finds that geographical indications (GIs) may be more conducive to local food systems because they are not owned but rather attributed, and, in this way, even smaller producers have access to the marketing potential of a GI label. Improving approaches to GIs in the United States, perhaps learning from the sui generis systems in other countries, could further the development, protection, and success of local products.
Losing LocalFor the first time in human history, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought about a nearly unimaginable revolution in our personal relationship to food. Until then nearly all of our daily consumption was sourced in the immediate or known region in which we lived. Nearly everything was local. Exotic foods such as coffee, tea, and spices were just that: exotic. They were not part of the average person's daily consumption and were often expensive. The great majority of the foods the world consumed were sourced locally.The immediate community was in touch with the condition of their foods through direct contact with the producers, and quality was relatively easily evaluated. Beyond basic techniques such as dehydrating, salting or smoking, very
In order to explore the contributions of origin products (OPs) to rural development, this chapter first conceptualizes both origin products (OPs) and rural development, and then analyses how different actors involved in OP systems mobilize these resources within their strategies. The examples of EU protected designations of origin (PDOs) and protected geographical indications (PGIs) highlight different categories of positive effects that OP product valorization can have on rural development, as well as some ambiguous effects.
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