Seattle Moves To Cleveland

Welcome to the Republic of Cascadia. At the heart of this ecotopia is Seattle. According to Entrepreneur, the rest of the country is catching up to its locavore ways and that includes Cleveland:

But economic opportunities also exist in the gaps between growers and consumers. Kari Moore doesn't harvest a single vegetable, doesn't run a restaurant and doesn't work at a market. Yet she makes a living through the locavore movement. Her company, FarmShare Ohio, distributes produce from small farmers to retail customers at drop-off points throughout the area.

"People have started to understand the value of local, seasonal eating, and they're willing to pay more to get it," says Moore, who grew up in Seattle, came to Cleveland in 1996 and has been involved in local food since 2002. "I still have to do a ton of education with my customers--and $35 a week for a bag of produce is still too much for a lot of people. But it's an exciting time and, I think, a huge business opportunity. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if it wasn't."

The article oozes geographic stereotypes. The frontier of the farm-to-table movement in the United States is in the Rust Belt. Foodie Cleveland has raced to the front. Why else would someone from Seattle move to Cleveland?

I think Kari Moore's migration is iconic of the Rust Belt Reset. It's all been done in cities such as Seattle, a former blue collar town gone upscale. The next Puget Sound is Lake Erie. All it takes is an outsider who doesn't realize she can't do what she is doing in Cleveland.