I used to go to a Trader Joes back in the early 90's that felt like a warehouse of bulk bins, locally made artisan bread, and produce from the central valley. As I grew into adulthood, and the Trader Joes franchice kept pace with their spurious growth across the US, the store changed. Actual artisan food disappeared, as nearly everything came from a single warehouse in Los Angeles, with most--if not all--of the produce getting trucked up from Central America. 

Trader Joes cleverly masks their mass-production, oil-gulping delivery network with the ubiquitous Friendly Flyer, a marketing coup that has convinced us all that they are the local grocer and baker and butcher. We're caught in this paradox, where, in our quest to eat healthy, organic, and more simple food, we shop at a market where virtually nothing is actually from the community (except for the few stale baguettes they sell). In this attempt to better our lives with good food from TJ's, we're destroying the local food community and cutting deep and jagged edges into the profit ledgers of those small companies. 

So what's the big deal? Don't shop there if you don't want to, right? I need to be careful about being that guy who puts on my holy robes of local food and flagellates you with the sceptor of truth. Well, I'm sitting here in my skivvies at the moment, and my only foray into flagellation resulted in scarring period of self-depracation. All I'm saying is that our commitment to being and buying local demands a greater attention to the big picture: a mega neighborhood corporation, whose systems delivery rivals Walmart, undoes the tie that binds--the family owned farms in the Sacramento Valley, the Cowgirl Creameries, the Bella Brus, and the Lucky Dogs.