https://www.patternlanguageindex.com/patterns/city-country-f...
I actually read his whole book. Most of his "patterns" are kind of quaint and twee, the sort of things that seem superficially attractive to people with no real domain knowledge. Highly overrated.
I realize we can't really go backward in time, but I would prefer if the farmers that lived close to where I am sold to people who live local to me. That can happen to some degree (open yard stands), and I like to do that for some of the smaller farms, but it's really a kind of "nice to have" rather than a "The market stocks stuff that was grown a town or two over" type thing. I feel like something probably got lost when that kind of arrangement went away.
There's still one or two local businesses that manage to make it into the local market for me which is neat to see, but that's more so because they are for frozen pastries and stuff, and can prepare a metric ton in advance, and the market can mark it up for being a "local specialty" type thing. I like to buy them when I can afford it. It just sucks that essentially every other thing on a shelf probably wasn't even made in the same time zone or hemisphere.
More widely, they matter in that farmers markets and roadside stands and such do exist. Why do they exist? Because there are enough people that want to buy from such places.
I mean, it's never going to be the way that food is sold. But those preferences matter enough for niche markets to exist.
Rome got its wheat from Egypt and its olive oil from around the Mediterranean.
Ancient egypt sent food up and down the nile to population centers in Cairo and Thebes.
And so on.
