Walmart going local???

According to Greenbiz.com - “In a bid to offset the rising cost of fuel, Wal-Mart plans to expand its offerings of fresh fruits and vegetables grown and shipped from local farms across the U.S.

During the last two years, partnerships between local farms and the world’s largest retailer have jumped 50 percent, and the company anticipates it will source about $400 million in local produce this year, making it the country’s largest buyer of produce that is grown and sold within a state’s borders.” (You can read the full post here….)

Isabel Cowles from The Huffington Post wrote a piece on Walmart’s move to buy local, saying it was a good thing. Personally, I don’t know….

As I mentioned in my post about Walmart earlier this week, what they do affects us all because they’re so big. And them working with local farmers will help boost local economies, or so it seems. The thing people might be forgetting is that Walmart operates on the ‘as cheap as possible’ scheme. And small local farmers can’t afford to sell their food for the prices Walmart is most likely going to want to buy them for – so I don’t know what’s going to happen. My fear is that Walmart will squeeze out farmers so, once again, they’re not making enough money to actually farm. (Did you know that most farmers have off-the-farm jobs in order to pay their bills?) I simply don’t think Walmart getting into the local food sector is going to change that because they’re going to want to pay the farmers as little as possible.

And that is not sustainable.