[SustainableTompkins] Eat-Local Backlash

[Michael Burns]

The Eat-Local Backlash

If buying locally isn't the answer, then what is?
By Tom Philpott
16 Aug 2007

http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2007/08/16/eatlocal/index.html? 
source=friend

Attention farmers' market shoppers: Put that heirloom tomato down and  
rush to the nearest supermarket.

By seeking local food, you're wantonly spewing carbon into the  
atmosphere.

That's the message of a budding backlash against the eat-local  
movement. The Economist fired a shotgun-style opening salvo last  
December, peppering what it called the "ethical foods movement" with  
a broad-spectrum critique.

Among the claims: organic agriculture consumes more energy than  
conventional, and food bought from nearby sources often creates more  
greenhouse-gas emissions than food hauled in from long distances.  
(Here was my response to that influential piece).

More recently, in a New York Times op-ed piece, the historian James  
E. McWilliams sought to debunk the idea that choosing locally  
produced food automatically decreases one's carbon footprint. He  
warns that efforts to reduce "food-miles" -- the distance between  
farm and plate -- might actually support higher carbon emissions at  
the source. And in Britain, a debate over whether to withdraw organic  
certification from African imports based on their transportation  
impact has spurred coverage of the issue as well .

In a sense, these high-profile rebukes are good news: they herald the  
arrival of the sustainable-food movement as a pop-culture phenomenon.  
Just as you're not really famous until you've been rumored to be gay  
or on drugs, a movement hasn't come into its own until it's drawn a  
formidable entourage of detractors.

A decade ago, few would have thought to analyze the efforts of eat- 
local zealots. But now, farmers' markets are booming, celebrity chefs  
are proudly decorating their menus with the names of nearby farms,  
and a steady stream of best-sellers is urging us to "come home to  
eat" (to paraphrase the title of Gary Paul Nabhan's popular 2001 book).

That surge has earned attention both positive and negative, and  
landed local-food advocates in a valuable position. By sniffing out  
easy sloganeering, a movement's critics can help it hone and deepen  
its analysis -- and reach the next level of acceptance.


Farm-to-Plate Tectonics

So how to respond to these critiques?

First of all, it's important to understand the context in which they  
come. The sustainable-food movement's achievements have thus far been  
largely cultural. In other words, despite all the attention from  
celebrity chefs, best-selling authors, and, ahem, environmental  
webzine columnists, the vast bulk of food consumed in this country  
still travels gargantuan distances, consumes unspeakable amounts of  
fossil fuel in its production and distribution, and leans heavily on  
poisons and water-polluting artificial fertilizers.

Way back in 1969, the U.S. Department of Defense performed what  
remains the only comprehensive nationwide study of the average  
distance food travels from farm to plate. The study's estimate, 1,200  
miles, probably falls well short of the current mark.

Why? Because food imports are rising at a stunning pace. According to  
the USDA, the dollar value of U.S. food imports doubled [Excel]  
between 1999 and 2006. Over the same period, exports rose nearly as  
fast.

In short, while we "locavores" strive to minimize food-miles, and  
critics chide us for the effort, food continues to zip across the  
U.S. borders, gushing in from, and flowing out to, points all across  
the globe.

And while the sustainable-food movement's power may be causing vapors  
within the pages of the Economist and the New York Times op-ed page,  
Wall Street hasn't gotten the memo. In the stock exchanges, shares in  
agribiz powerhouses Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, John Deere,  
Smithfield, and Tyson are all trading at or near all-time highs. That  
means that the "smart money" isn't quite as impressed by the rise of  
buy-local campaigns as commentators on either side of the food-miles  
debate are. For unsentimental investors, the profit prospects for  
industrialized agriculture, geared for long-haul distribution, are  
rosier than ever.


Miles to Go

So food-miles are likely adding up at an accelerating rate, and may  
well continue to do so. Is that so bad? Not in the eyes of some.  
McWilliams makes the case that we should forget food-miles and focus  
instead on lifecycle analysis -- accounting for not just  
distribution, but also for energy burned in growing food.

This eminently reasonable insight leads him to a startling claim:  
that locally grown food under certain conditions burns more energy,  
and leads to higher greenhouse-gas emissions, than food produced  
thousands of miles away. Echoing The Economist, McWilliams trots out  
a recent study claiming to show that green-minded U.K. consumers  
should spurn locally grown lamb in favor of lamb grown in distant New  
Zealand.

Why? Because according to the study, "lamb raised on New Zealand's  
clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain  
produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton, while  
British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part  
because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed."

To McWilliams, the message is clear: U.K. residents should buy more  
New Zealand lamb, and reject local product. But over on Ethicurean,  
Small-Mart Revolution author Michael Shuman raises a key point about  
the study: it compares conventionally grown, feed-reliant U.K. lamb  
with lamb raised in New Zealand, where all lamb is grown on pasture.

But pasture-based organic U.K. lamb exists and is available. Wouldn't  
buying that be the greener option for U.K. consumers? The study  
doesn't comment on this option -- perhaps because, as Shuman points  
out, its authors are funded by New Zealand agribusiness interests  
that rely on export markets.


Act Locally, Think Regionally

What often arises in the food-miles debate, I think, is a false  
dichotomy: local vs. long distance. But the most attractive model  
might be a regional one. McWilliams touches on it, albeit vaguely,  
with a mention of a "hub-and-spoke system of food production and  
distribution." Crucially, he clings to the notion that Western  
consumers can continue to commandeer the globe's bounty perpetually,  
season be damned.

"Consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse,  
always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer," he  
declares confidently, even though such choices have existed all of,  
say, 40 years.

At any rate, what could such a robust regional system look like?

Take North Carolina, where I live and help run a farm. The state  
stretches nearly 400 miles east to west, encompassing relatively cool  
Appalachian highlands and blistering-hot eastern lowlands. Orthodox  
"locavores" in either region commit themselves to various year-round  
privations: many vegetables wilt (or require heavy irrigation) in the  
eastern summers, and can't survive cold highland winters. But I like  
any idea that pushes local-food advocates beyond arbitrary  
constructions such as "100-mile" diets.

Currently, most supermarkets across the state tap into global  
production networks that rely on long-haul travel. But ideally, North  
Carolinians could eat regionally year-round if we organized to  
leverage these regional differences. What if the west provided the  
bulk of the state's food production in the summer months, and the  
east did so in the cold months?

To do so with any reasonable amount of environmental responsibility,  
we'd have to reject the temptation to transport food up and down the  
mountains in diesel-guzzling, highway-hogging 18-wheelers. Rather, as  
Rich Pirog of Iowa State University's Leopold Center for Sustainable  
Agriculture recently told me, "If we want regional food systems to be  
energy-efficient, we have to reinvest in rail infrastructure."

Pirog, who probably counts as the nation's most rigorous analyst of  
food-miles, told me that as recently as 1980, trains accounted for  
fully half of food transport in the United States. By 1997, following  
a period of low petroleum prices and steady decay of rail systems,  
just 13 percent of food traveled on trains. Trucks hauled the other  
87 percent.

Thus rebuilding regional food networks -- presumably what McWilliams  
means by "strengthen[ing] comparative geographical advantages" --  
requires something that critics of the eat-local movement rarely  
advocate: reinvestment in food-production and distribution  
infrastructure designed for something beyond maximizing agribusiness  
profit.

Such a regional conception requires not a rejection of the eat-local  
ethic, but rather a broadening of it.

Contra industrial-agriculture dogma -- implicitly echoed by  
McWilliams and other eat-local critics -- we'd still have to relearn  
the skill of thriving within the physical limits of relatively nearby  
landscapes. And we'd still have to think seriously about hard  
questions posed by Wendell Berry: "What will nature permit me to do  
here without damage to herself or to me? What will nature help me to  
do here?"

Got a question about where your last supper came from?
Fork it over.
Grist contributing writer Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick  
Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue  
Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

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Earn your permaculture design certificate.
The Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute
offers affordable local classes.
http://www.fingerlakespermaculture.org
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