Locavore
Food Chain Radio Show #978
Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist
THE 10,000 MILE DIET!
Which food is the economically most efficient: Local or industrial?
Author of The Locavore’s Dilemma
For most of our existence, we ate food grown very close to home. And much of the food we ate was grown, harvested and processed by ourselves.
Then, a few short decades ago, we discovered the technologies of industriailzation, and with this technology, moved our farms far away to more friendly climes, where someone else grows, harvests and processes the food for us.
Michael Olson Food Chain Radio: WhIch food is economically most efficient: local or distant?
No longer needed to grow food, we moved into town, and to behind a desk, where we spend our time tending binary digits with electronic implements.
But somewhere along the line, we digit herders developed an appetite– a huge hunger, actually– for local food, and so began to preach to each other the gospel of “local.” Today, local food is the focal point of most cuisine cultures, and many of us digit herders have become “locavores.”
Our turning away from the ease and prices of distant foods has left many in the distant agriculture community in a state of confusion. Listen to the frustration, as voiced by David Sasuga in a letter to Vegetable Growers News:
“The locally grown movement. I am against this because, although we are a small family farm, we have worked hard to succeed and have been able to expand our reach in terms of sales and market size. We ship product far outside our local area, and even though we have better quality, selection, etc., the locavore movement is hurting my business because it has become almost politically incorrect to buy produce from California if you are living in the Midwest or East Coast. Chefs are choosing local over mine, even though it is far inferior product, just because it’s local.”
To combat the frustration expressed in this letter to the editor, many in the community of distant agriculture are putting forward the notion distant food is economically more efficient than local food. And so we ask…
Which food is economically most efficient: local or distant?
