links for 2008-06-11

Dubner's argument is at best disingenuous. He starts with a straw man and false dichotomy pretending "local foods" has anything to do with the cost of making homemade sorbet. The man either has an agenda or makes his living writing by provoking people with the stupid.

Ron,

Aside from the ice cream anecdote, it seems the main message of the article is that the benefits of large scale production are overlooked or discounted by "Locavores." His piece is provocative, but I don't think it's disingenuous (or wrong).

I agree that there are costs with having all food locally produced, and to really break down what is ideal requires a more thorough analysis than the typical Alice Waters "buy local because it is better"

That said, I also agree with Ron's point that the first paragraph is some sort of weird false dichotomy that Dubner uses to introduce his point. Making your own sorbet is really hard, and completely irrelevant to the local food movement. The local food movement is based on buying tomatos and apples from the same hemisphere that you live in, not based on reproducing the entire food production industry in your kitchen.

"Aside from the ice cream anecdote, it seems the main message of the article is that the benefits of large scale production are overlooked or discounted by "Locavores."

I think he's overemphasizing the 'local' aspect. Locavore practice is to source your food within, roughly, 50 to 150 miles. Just saying "Local" is somewhat misleading, because most people think of local as being within a reasonable commuting distance, if not less. Yes, if you limit your food to that which is grown in your town, you may have problems.

That said, I expect the main benefits for local sourcing would happen for institutional food service, like at Harvard, which ought to increase transportation efficiency - it's more efficient for a farm to bring 300 pounds of eggplant and squash to one place, than to bring 30 pounds to each of 10 places.

The other benefit of locavore practice is that it puts the focus back on locally available foods, rather than foods that are out of season and *have* to be transported long distances.

The ice cream thing is bugging me.

He might as well say "I got crappy bread out of my bread machine I never used before, ergo, you should buy Wonder Bread rather than fresh bread from the local bakery"

There are some benefits to locavore-ism -- by carefully selecting and tending ones own food production, IF one knows what one is doing, one can make some food quite a bit tastier some of the time. And it can be fun.

What gets me is when people claim that there are either environmental or economic arguments for it. The fact is that there really aren't, and it bothers every scientific bone in my body that people have been misled into believing that there are. The article, and others like it, are entirely correct.

Well... the point he's making is probably correct, but the argument is still infuriatingly wrong.

There's a local dairy about ten miles from my house. They make damn good ice cream. I don't have to handcraft the stuff to say that it's locally sourced!

But on a different point... am I wrong for constantly seeing that word as "lolcatvores"?

My problem with his dismissive rant is the typical economists blind spot. Of course large-scale production can produce cheaper goods, but at many hidden costs. Just to pick one example: there are pesticides which can't be used by US farms but are manufactured here and exported. Then we import food grown with them elsewhere. This not only puts us at risk from residues, but also supports the damage done to the communities downwind of the farm breathing the spray. A sort of agricultural NIMBYism. Understanding all the environment costs of everything we eat is darn near impossible. Eating local is just one component of the attempt to do so.