There are plenty of good reasons, from freshness to knowing the provenance of your food. But you may not know all of the other impacts that remote purchases have.

Local First does a great job of explaining this (by way of trends research firm PSFK .) They point out that nearly double the money leaves the local economy when buying things from afar — intangibles like accounting.

It’s not just the short-term money being spent elsewhere: longer-term effects happen too. Consider, for example, an ailing local economy that can’t afford good schools; this in turn contributes to less-trained local workers, meaning locally produced goods are less valuable.

When buying food, local makes even more sense. It’s not just the percentage of money that leaves the community, it’s the total cost as well. Shipping and storing food increases the total cost and reduces the money that makes its way into farmers’ pockets.