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Locavorism is not good for you
A customer shops for nectarines at a farmers market on June 13, 2012 in San Francisco, Calif. Commentator Pierre Desrochers offers the contrarian view that buying food locally is good for your health and the environment.
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If taken seriously, locavorism would not only mean lower standards of living and shorter life expectancies, but also increased environmental damage.
Think of it this way. Because nobody would bother transporting foodstuffs over long distances if it didn't deliver superior outcomes, locavorism can only result in higher prices and less variety. A less varied diet is inevitably less nutritious. Higher prices also leave less money in local pockets to spend on other things, in the process destroying jobs both at home and abroad. Furthermore, foreign food exporters no longer have the means to purchase other goods produced in the locavores' community.
In addition, producing food in the most suitable locations and delivering it over long distances is actually much "greener" than growing vegetables or manufacturing dairy products locally. The "local" operations require energy-guzzling heated greenhouses instead of natural heat, massive amounts of irrigation water rather than abundant rainfall, and large volumes of animal feed to make up for less productive pastureland. It's better to grow tomatoes in the Florida sun than in a heated greenhouse in upstate New York because the energy required to transport them 1200 miles is only a fraction of that required to heat greenhouses for several weeks.
The most preposterous claim of locavores is that their prescription increases food security. Yet, no local food system can ever be completely protected from insects, plant and animal diseases, drought, floods, earthquakes and other natural catastrophes. Fortunately, trade liberalization insures that the surplus of regions with good harvests can be channeled to those with below average ones. In the long run, good and bad harvests cancel each other out. Locavorism, by contrast, puts all of one's agricultural eggs in one regional basket.
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It is a balance, as are most things in my experience. I buy local when I can and the quality is good, and I buy from other sources when what I want isn't readily available from local producers. We have a farmer's market down the street once per week, and I am a regular customer. We have great produce and great seafood in Seattle, but it is not always what we want. Balance.
Marketplace,
You need to do an extensive review of integrity in the educational market. When most researchers are taking money from big business to find "scientific" bases for their marketing (look at the drug market, agriculture, climate change, economics, etc. ), "scientific integrity" has beed sold to the highest bidder. Look at all the instances of faked data exposed in the last few years, cooking the results of drug tests, etc. And the screwing of students at for-profit colleges.
What about it Marketplace?
At least review this crap before you post it!
I live in Michigan which is second to California in the variety of agricultural products. Why should I purchase produce that is shipped across the country when I can easily support my local farmers and the state in which I reside? I get a CSA box every week with a variety of produce and even varieties amongst the various peas or beans or squash or lettuces I get.
Aboriginal people have always eaten locally and had amazingly healthy diets. Historically, Native Americans in Michigan did not eat Florida oranges to get vitamin C and avoid scurvy. What they found locally provided for them which in the case of vitamin C was white pine tea (our state tree).
I barter for milk from a local farmer and purchase local eggs from free range chickens. I know from where my food comes personally and that is food security at its best.
Sounds like the same ignorance that touts there is no global warming is alive and well in Pierre. Most likely for the same reasons: we must protect the large corporations view of how to run the world. Industrialized Agriculture is not the answer for a creating a sustainable world. Shipping every porduct 10,000 miles is not the answer for a creating a sustainable world. Claiming the beginninig of answers to resolve our unsustainable global society are the problem and will be the doom of humanity is certainly not the answer creating a sustainable world. Giving air time to this imbecile and his protectionism for corporated control is beneath the normal standards of American Public Media -- are they being taken over by ignorance or by monitary greed?
All of comments on here are right on the money.
Thank you all for your comments and common sense approach.
This is what Pierre requires. More common sense and less indoctrination by the educational system. its obvious he has been dumbed down as the ruling class desires.
In conclusion, I doubt if any of those who posted commented here today have written a book.
They are all too busy growing their own foods.
Take off the suit, tie and expensive shoes and get down into the dirt. This is what sustains life Pierre, not crap grown thousands of miles away and shipped all over the planet.
You call it "free enterprise" when all these folks are working, but I call it waste. Eat local for optimal health.
I would have to say that Pierre Desrochers hasn't spent much time outside of the concrete jungle of Toronto. And as for growing his own food, the poor boy would starve.
Where do you get people like this? All because they are university educated and have some degree and wrote a book. Big deal. To me, he's another educated fool. Society is full of these experts who know more and more about less and less.
As for tomatoes Pierre baby. Eat local and eat whats in season. Humans have done it for generations. Eat what is available. People of the past stored food for the winter and hunted.
I work in a restaurant and deal with those Florida grown tomatoes which are picked green so they can "ship well" all over the country. They are anemic looking and tasteless. Its no wonder the customers don't eat them.
I eat and enjoy tomatoes but in season. I currently have over 40 various tomato plants in my garden. Will start consuming them in late July.
Within the past 6 months, there was an author on NPR and also Fresh Air who wrote a book about the tomatoes from Florida and why they are the way they are. He should read it.
Pierre Desrochers to me sounds like some advocate for Globalism.
I have spent many years traveling and working overseas. The first thing I notice about most cultures outside of the U.S. are the markets everywhere. The foods available overseas are generally harvested hours before they reach the local markets. You can't say that about American foods as they are overprocessed, fragmented, chemicalized, devitalized, GMO ladened, dead and plain old stale.
Your modern day supermarkets could well be called mausoleums where dead foods lie in state.
Every try growing your own sprouts, Pierre? I germinate well over a dozen seeds and beans especially come winter time. That is if I'm not overseas working and enjoying the local fare of FRESH foods.
Your notion of foods coming long distances is of foods that are old and dying. You can't do better than growing your own buddy.
I will take local foods anything over your "global" crap. Are you aware of the energy involved say in growing, transporting and marketing of mangoes and strawberries from Central Africa to the markets in England and France?
And again the fruit is tasteless and immature. Much goes to waste as its too expensive for the locals to purchase it. Ecology Magazine did an article on this topic years ago.
Good luck selling your book. By the way, get a real job.
Anyone who extols the virtue of Florida tomatoes has no taste for food.
Even in Toronto, fresh local garden tomatoes should soon be in the farmer markets, started in solar heated hoop row houses. Fresh juicy delicious tomatoes for three to four months will make those Florida tomatoes unpalatable for the next 8 months.
The tomatoes grown in Florida are picked when they are green hardballs and then gassed with ethylene to turn them red while the fruit matures to something with the texture of a tomato picked too early.
Out of season, tomatoes were traditionally dried, and packed in oil, but now we have canning for ripe picked tomatoes immediately processed in the Midwest and California which makes them relatively local.
And for tomatoes, dozens of varieties are commonly available for diversity and different growing conditions and disease resistance, so your farmers markets will offer a far greater number of choices than your tomatoes that traveled the 10,000 miles.
And a several packets of different tomato seeds are real cheap with little labor required to produce excellent tomatoes grown in your front yard - pass the extra seeds around the neighborhood.
But the problem for academics is taste and joy on eating isn't measured in tons per acre.
Marketplace, you can do better than this. Yes, there may be times when it is more expensive to produce locally than a spot with "abundant sunshine and rain", but that argument in no way offsets all the ridiculous claims Mr. Desrochers makes. There are just too many to address. And I feel sorry for him rejecting wonderful fresh food.
Thank you Marketplace for airing this I was listening while riding my bike and was so angry at the ridiculous assertions of this ass that I was able to beat a personal best! I agree that you should offer a counterpoint and have a few folks in mind if you want to shoot me a PM. I have to go out to my garden and pick some squash, beans, and tomatoes.
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