Alongside the Grain: Conceptualizing Scale and the Upper Threshold of Local in the Agro-industrial Palouse

Abstract

This paper uses a case study of local food system development in the agro-industrial Palouse region of the northwestern United States to examine how communities negotiate the boundaries of local. Farmer-vendor participation in the region's largest farmers market shows that local-scale boundaries are porous and sometimes problematic, particularly when considering producers on the “upper threshold of local”—the boundary between local and middle socio-spatial scales. Examining how farmer-vendor strategies, farmers market politics, and organizational engagement in Palouse civic agriculture relate to a contested upper threshold boundary provides insights on how distance-dependent notions of local may be challenged, how operation size can be stretched, and how this blurry and porous boundary presents problems for mid-sized operations hoping to engage or broker multiple locales or scales.