Farming for jobs: Can local food movement prove a broader economic engine?

….Steve Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison, agrees there are areas in southwestern Wisconsin enjoying the benefits of the local food trend, but adds that there is little research proving it?s an economic driver.”Twenty years ago, all the research said local foods was such a small market it wasn?t worth worrying about,” he says. “But over the past five or more years, there has been a ?push back? on large-scale commercial agriculture.”