not far from the tree

Great article here on eating locally. You should read it all first, then reread my favourite part:

For 200 years, the food crops of the New World were cultivated by slaves. When the Spaniards brought bananas to the Caribbean, they needed to get the natives to do the backbreaking work of harvesting them in large plantations. But the natives were food self-sufficient and had little or no need for money. Thus the Spanish outlawed personal gardens. By destroying food self-sufficiency, they created a work force for growing exported food.

Today the dynamic of globalization and dependence is more nuanced but no less important. Countries are shifting land use and growing crops for export instead of local consumption. This may enrich some farmers but forces many others into poverty and increases hunger. The developing countries subsidize commodity exports, such as dumping grains on poorer countries, that impoverish small farmers. Indeed, just a few days ago CARE, a nonprofit that works to fight global poverty, refused tens of millions of dollars in federal money for food aid to Africa. CARE argued that the program was counterproductive. By supplying free food, the United States was undercutting domestic farmers, and poverty and hunger was increasing, not decreasing.

Local resources processed by local businesses for local consumption is the ideal.