By now we are all familiar with the benefits of shopping locally. When you purchase what you can in your own community you support people, your local merchants directly, instead of the corporations of the big box stores, and strengthen the fabric of your downtown. Shopping locally for produce puts money directly into your local farmers' pockets, not the supermarket corporation. Here a post on localism and a related post of voting with your $.
Permaculture (here a post on that), a fairly new agricultural system, has always worked with native plants. Now we are beginning to expand our awareness to the benefits of using native plants in our gardens - gardening localism.
Plants that naturally evolved in a particular habitat are inherently hardier, which means more resistant to weather extremes and more resilient to pests. Native plants have stronger genetic material than hybrids, and are biologically more diverse. Perhaps you have heard that Peru's staple, the potato, comes in almost four thousand different varieties! Now that is biodiversity. Each potato variable developed within its own little ecosystem of weather and soil conditions, and thrives in that particular small patch of land. A hybrid, on the other hand, was developed in a research facility, out of context of particular local soil and weather conditions. When such a hybrid is introduced into an out-of-context garden ecosystem that plant is like a fish out of water.