In a time when everything feels distant — corporations, supply chains, even our neighbors — it’s easy to forget where real power begins: on the ground, in the hands of the people who grow, create, and show up for their communities every week. Local agriculture is not a niche. It’s not a weekend pastime. It’s a movement — and we are barely scratching the surface of what it can do for our economy, our neighborhoods, and our sense of purpose.
I’ve spent my life in this space. From selling eggs at farmers markets as a kid to now managing the Marina del Rey Farmers Market and running my own honey company, I’ve watched local food change lives — not just in nutrition, but in identity. I’ve seen customers become friends, farms become community centers, and vendors find their voice as entrepreneurs, teachers, and caretakers of something greater than a bottom line.
Local agriculture, at its core, is the last standing reminder that we are all connected. It’s where an elder can share wisdom over a basket of peaches. It’s where a young maker gets their first sale. It’s where culture, food, and community collide with beauty and grit. And it’s where entrepreneurialism isn’t about unicorns and exits—but about showing up at 5 a.m. with a truck full of hope.
What we need now is not more tech — but more tables. More chances for people to talk to their farmers, to taste food grown within 100 miles, and to support someone whose name they know. This is the economy we can believe in. Not extracted from elsewhere, but built from within.
But we can’t let this work stay invisible. Local agriculture is powerful because it’s personal. Yet for too long, it has been treated as background noise in the economic and political conversations of our time. It’s time we recognize it as a front-line force: in healing our food systems, activating young entrepreneurs, and creating resilient, responsive communities.
Let’s be bold. Let’s reimagine what leadership looks like — not in corner offices, but under canopy tents and in field rows. Let’s fund markets like we fund innovation hubs. Let’s teach our kids how to grow, how to build, and how to connect — not just how to consume.
Local agriculture is not just part of the solution. It is the soil from which solutions grow.
