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Demand for locally produced food products has increased in Finland in the past few years. It has brought new opportunities for food market actors from primary production to retail selling to invest in increasing their capacity and to promote local food in the market. This paper scrutinises local food in two ways, firstly, consumer preferences on purchasing local food and, secondly as comparison, producers' willingness to invest in the growth of local food production and their obstacles in doing so. The data used were obtained from three separate surveys. According to the survey results, consumers would prefer to buy products directly from farmers or via small distributors rather than from large-chain stores. In addition, the communication of farm enterprises themselves is seen more reliable than the communication by the food industry or retail. The entrepreneurs saw lack of time to develop the business as their …