Ms. Bealer's argument in the October 17 Daily Collegian regarding the impracticality of locally-grown produce in State College holds fair logic within her value system. Ms. Bealer's values possibly represent the Collegian's readership, primarily including the pre-eminence of following a strict monetary bottom-line.

Secondly, she implicitly accepts the current near-imperialist relations that national and trans-national corporations sustain with their distributed inputs (farms and farmers; mines and miners; forests and loggers) and outputs (supermarkets and other big-box retailers). In sum, where there's no will, there's no way.

Consider these statistics: New England farmers receive only 21 cents for every dollar a consumer pays in the supermarket. Only 2 percent of the United States population still farms yet 3 percent of these farms supply 75 percent of the nation's food.

Your average farmer produces more than 100 pounds of corn to buy a 25-ounce package of frosted flakes. Only 10 percent of the fossil fuel energy used in our food system goes toward production while 90 percent goes toward packaging, transportation and marketing.

Perhaps the monetary price of locally-grown produce is not especially inflated. Furthermore, perhaps our current food system institutionally hides and apparently deflates its environmental, social, and economic impact.

My point, though, is not entirely one of individual economics. The argument for local products (and self-reliance) addresses community economics, empowerment, and governance.

True, locally-grown produce does not have an inherent claim to increased healthfulness, but what it and other local efforts do offer is a tilted balance of power, an extra point for health on numerous fronts.