Prosperity begins at home.

Every dollar spent is like a seed. Spend it on goods and services produced in an environmentally benign and socially responsible fashion and a healthy community will grow where it is sown. Spend it on the mass-produced and impersonally delivered products of giant corporations and their wealth and influence will grow like weeds, crowding out all that is unique or individual.

"It is important to recognize that however much or little money one might have, the choices one makes in spending that money carry a great deal of weight in determining not only the products and services that the market offers but also the very quality of community life," writes Thomas Greco in Money; Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender. 

"Although price is one of the primary criteria to be considered, it should not be the most important one."

We believe that independent growers and crafters and artisans create healthy communities through their local involvement and unfettered decision-making. They invest themselves and their profits locally, among their neighbors, rather than in external machinations designed only to produce more money.

Buying directly from the producer who makes the product or grows the crop confers greater profit and more autonomy to the producer and his or her community. It offers us the security of knowing where and how and by whom the product was made. And it helps inspire the production of better quality and more original goods and services than what the mass markets engender.

Unlike other online marketplaces and services that advertise products sold "direct from the farmer," Farmer's Market Online does not resell producers' goods or charge them a commission on their sales. It operates just like a traditional farmers' market, leasing a Booth space or listing to vendors who deal with and sell directly to the consumer with no middleman.

This is a book about attempts by communities to wrest control over their economic and social destinies back from the banks and large corporations whose monetary and financial machinations dominate the pecuinary landscape.

"The term community is used to describe any association of individuals, groups, or businesses that bind themselves together under an agreement to use an internal payment mechanism," the author ecplains. 

"Under this definition, it is clear that a community need not be defined by geographical proximity. It is possible to conceive of a community of traders who are widely dispersed geographically. Indeed, we are seeing the emergence of Internet-based communities in which the transactions take place in cyberspace and participants are scattered all over the world."

Examples of local currency and exchange experiments include the Massachusetts Farmers' Market Coupon scrips and the HOUR notes issued in Ithaca, New York. Dozens of alternative currencies and exchange systems are shared along with advice on how to get them going.

Here are the blueprints for re-empowering communities with supplemental and alternative financial systems that bypass the debt-based monetary monopolies and return a degree of self-determination to producers and consumers alike.