This week in class we discussed how beneficial it is to manufacture local, and how detrimental it is to not. I think one of the hardest things about going local is actually implementing it. Obviously, people don’t need to be educated on how beneficial going local is to their community or their country, they are already well aware. It’s the actual changes that need to be made in order to go local that everyone finds so difficult. The in-class discussion really opened my eyes to this topic. One student brought up a possible solution for why it is so hard to start the implementation of going local. Everyone that lives in the country, for instance, here in Oklahoma, is really only surrounded by themselves. Therefore, they don’t really think about the benefits to going local since they really are their own community. Another student talked about a city in Oregon that had already implemented ways to become more local and how successful it has been. I think it takes telling people and showing people cities that have already made the change and how successful they are to really make a community want to do the same. If they can see the benefits it has on a city, they will want the same success for their own city and be more willing to make some sacrifices here and there if it means it will pay off in the end. After class, I really want to start researching more ways that I myself can become more local and help my community.