How Green is Local Food? Not so much.

[HuckleB]

Even under the best circumstantial evidence, which this piece offers, locavorism has been shown to be one of the most worthless areas of possible improvement for farming, ecology, and nutrition. It's no different than the marketing scams of "organic" and "non-GMO," at this point in time.

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-local-food/

[F4lconF16]

1. Um. You left a part out.

Small and local farms provide numerous economic, social and environmental benefits beyond fewer food miles.

The farmers market at Columbia University.
Local food keeps local land in production and local money in the community, often costs less than conventionally produced food, and builds community relations. Decentralized production also reduces food safety risks, as long-distance food can potentially be contaminated at many points on its journey to our plates.

Small farms also more readily adopt environmentally friendly practices. They often rebuild crop and insect diversity, use less pesticides, enrich the soil with cover crops, create border areas for wildlife, and produce tastier food (since industrial food is bred to withstand long-distance shipping and mechanical harvesting).

[HuckleB]

2. Over and over again, those supposed benefits have not proven to be what proponents claim them to be.

Can you provide a consensus peer reviewed research that supports your claims?

Also, I didn't write this particular piece, so you might want to make your responses more appropriate.

http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local-food/

http://www.alternet.org/food/locavore-movement-overlooks-farmworkers

[F4lconF16]

3. You quoted a headline that refers to a specific part of the article

And not the overall conclusions of the article. The article you linked stated that while pursuing local food is not a good way to reduce carbon emissions, there are numerous other benefits.

So what you did was quote a misleading title without the actual conclusions presented, add in a comment of your own in an effort to make it appear that the article supported your comments, and then linked to an article that supports nothing of what you're claiming to say (that is, that local food does not have significant benefits).

Oh. Then you just now cited two pieces supporting your claim. Odd.

I'm going on a bike ride, it's nice out. Too nice to be playing around on DU.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. You also left this out...

“When comparing agricultural systems, it’s important to understand how complex they are and look at all aspects—social, environmental and economic,” said Sullivan. “Unfortunately, there are very few datasets available to the scientific community yet that look at all of these various aspects and permit comprehensive comparisons of agriculture systems.”

So, looks like you won't be able to provide such research that supports your claim.

The two other links are to a piece seeming to put comparative advantage of total food costs ahead of local benefits of production and sale and and another about labor inequities, neither of which show any evidence that locavores are falling for a scam.

Now, here are a couple of links to completely unscientific PR puff pieces that give a hint of some of the pseudoeconomic benefits of local farms:

http://www.lifb.com/ABOUT/HistoryOfLIAgriculture/tabid/240/Default.aspx

http://www.discoverlongisland.com/visitors/ThingsResult.aspx/minor/WEBFRMPIC

(And yes, I made that word up)

[fasttense]

5. The US exports And Imports about equal amounts of food.

That means that most of the food grown here in the US is NOT eaten here. And most of the food we eat comes from outside the US. That certainly sounds like an inefficient, wasteful and inept food system to me.

It sounds just like the fools who thought pouring poisons on our foods to kill bugs was a good idea. It sounds like the stupid behind the idea that pouring a heavy metal bonding agent all over genetically manipulated food would be delicious.