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Every other Saturday in the winter, I head out to a bustling local-food bazaar, the pickup site of the multi-farm CSA I help run in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains. A few weeks ago, I watched customers marvel over the spread: bok choy, kale, potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, garlic, free-range eggs, pasture-raised meat, freshly baked bread, and more. The rest of Appalachia, where the economy still sucks, seemed a world away. I couldn’t help but wonder if the answer to at least some of our jobs woes didn’t lie right in front of me.

Every year, Americans spend almost $1.2 trillion on food, equal to nearly a tenth of total US GDP. In most communities, the great bulk of that goes to fast-food chains and retail giants like Walmart-and doesn’t do much for locals. As Minnesota-based economist Ken Meter puts it, “Our food system is extractive, sort of like mining.”

Indeed. A series of case studies by the consultancy Civic Economics shows that for every dollar we spend at a large chain, about 15 cents stays in the area, while locally owned enterprises trap 30 to 45 cents. Locally owned food companies are often on the upper end of that range. That’s because they tend to source their products from the area-unlike, say, local bookstores or boutiques, which generally buy their inventory from far away.