Small Scale -The Importance of Supporting Local Businesses
The consumption of locally sourced products and services help to preserve the uniqueness and diversity of a culture.

Small scale can be defined as consumption and trade based on personal relationships and the social interaction between the buyer and the seller. The tangible effect of small-scale commerce is the bond of respect, solidarity, and pride in the community, which comes from supporting locally owned businesses.

After visiting Italy for the first time many years ago, I was struck by the fact of how the Italian people had managed to preserve the uniqueness and diversity of their culture, social values, and culinary traditions. Wherever I traveled, from the  Dolomite Mountains in the north, to Sicily in the South, or walked through the lanes of remote hill villages, or the alleys and streets of Milano, Naples or Rome, I couldn’t take more than a few hundred steps without seeing at least one bakery, salumeria, pescheria, fruit and vegetable stand, or any other number of specialty food shops.

The fresh, locally grown, ingredients that are found in these small family-owned shops, are the vital core of the Italian kitchen. You can’t expect to find them in an internationally based chain supermarket, with vegetables and fruit shipped across oceans and continents, and then put in ripening chambers and wrapped in plastic, or where chilled displays are filled with prepackaged, tasteless, meat from livestock and poultry that are fed artificial growth hormones and antibiotics.

The foundation of a culture is the unbroken relationship between the present and the past. There is a risk that the traditional production of the food stuffs, which give Italy the high-quality ingredients, which are a staple of the country’s cuisine, will be replaced by inferior but more profitable crops, when coming generations lose their connection to the land.

In a time of growing anonymity, in large part due to internet shopping, small scale commerce promotes an appreciation of the farmer who grows and brings produce to the market, and the butcher who supplies the meat you eat. There is a basic connection when we purchase a loaf of bread that comes from the hands of the neighborhood baker, or fruit and vegetables from the local market stalls, and when we support artisans and small businesses that are the life blood of a city, town, or village.