The Freakonomics folks are stirring up the anti-locavore pot once again, this time with a guest post by James McWilliams, a historian and the author of the forthcoming book Just Food. The thrust of McWilliams' argument is this: In many regions of the country it makes no economic, environmental, or eating sense to adopt a locavore diet, because the climate or the land itself doesn't lend itself to locavore practices. There is no news here. Locavorism taken to its illogical extreme in places with short growing seasons (like New York and the entire northeastern U.S.) is neither practical nor desirable unless: 1. We are willing to eat only canned, preserved, and frozen vegetables eight months of the year 2. We...
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Andrew Martin in his Feed column in the New York Times business section questions just how green the locavore movement is. What spurred his question? Researchers at UC Davis are conducting studies trying to determine the actual carbon footprint of local food. Isn't this kind of a silly academic exercise? We don't need a study to tell us that driving to a farmers' market every day in a gas-guzzling SUV to buy a pound of local produce leaves a heavy carbon footprint and is bad for the environment....
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