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We can't forget to consider the other benefits of buying local including more interaction with the person who produces the food. This can mean safer food (everyone wants their tomatoes from the guy down the street right now) and more say in how the food is grown (try asking big agro about their water use and waste runoff).

And if you read the conclusions of the study Dubner references, you'll note that "food miles" play a much bigger role in the carbon footprint of vegetables. It's just that there are so many more inputs to animal agriculture, that they dwarf the carbon benefits of buying local.

Credit where credit's due. The original recipe is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World by Moskowitz and Romero.

Like any other good idea, buying produce locally has its problems. For one, seasons. My local farmer's market is open less than half the year, and if that was the only place I bought produce, right now I could have lettuce, spinach, aspargus and radishes. If I want any sort of produce in December, it's going to have to travel to get here unless it's grown in a greenhouse, and I have to wonder how carbon-friendly that is.

I buy from the farmer's market from the time it opens until the day it closes, but I still buy other produce at grocery stores. I happen to like bananas and oranges and other things that don't grow in this climate. Could I live without those things? Sure. But I don't want to. Nor do I want to give up coffee, salt, pepper, most spices, or sugar, none of which are locally produced.

When it comes to "food miles," one thing that's left out of the equation is the fact that the truck that delivers the produce likely has a load of something that will go the other way. Eliminate the food being shipped one way, and there's still the freight that has to go the other way. Maybe it's food going both ways, but it's different food. It's not like we're shipping carrots back and forth across the country just for the fun of it.

Some really good points arguing both sides of this, awesome! I'll try here with my feeble addition.

A few things are overlooked by the article and comments. First off, how the hell does comparing the costs of a retail purchase at the end of the carbon footprint chain, combined with his apparent lack of shopping and culinary skills, at all compare with local producers that are buying in bulk at a wholesale rate? It doesn't. It's a ridiculous, hyperbolic comparison that is so prevalent in the media and used as a tool by bullsh*t artists that can only make their points of linear thinking by exaggerating, dividing and framing the discussion into a black or white mindf*ck. Had he left it as just a comedic intro it wouldn't be worth commenting on. But he uses it as the foundation of his comparative argument. The indication of his exaggerated title alone transmutes anything he's got to add to the discussion as highly suspect.

Again, hyperbole is used in his assessment of the quality of commercial goods being better, feeding on the ignorance of his audience because statistically very few have neither now nor have ever grown vegetables and understand the simplicity and bounty. And just as general appeal is concerned, his assessment of what is better is, like deliciousness, is obviously, highly subjective - neigh, highly trained on lifetime of commercially produced product. And he discloses no point of objective comparison to suggest otherwise.

He asks, "Are you sure you really saved money by growing your own zucchini." Absolutely. I stick a seed in the ground, water it, pull a few weeds, maybe use some home-made organic pesticide, harvest, compost remains to nourish next crop. How is that not saving money and carbon footprint? To suggest otherwise is absolutely ludicrous.

And to top it off he completely misses the point of environmental as well as community, individual, and environmental health benefits and biodiversity of producing locally - including growing your own.

This article is narrow-minded trash journalism and not worth our time. But we all fell for it.

It's a spade. Boo hoo, next.

My biggest issue with the article is the conclusion is made because he failed at what he did, once, and then gave up. If you buy all the stuff for a garden and then never garden again then you'll never re-coup the cost, but if you continue to use those tools and more importantly the lessons learned, it can become very cost effective to grow some of your own veggies.

Mr. Dubner is not actually an economist. He may be a first-rate writer and editor, but Steven Levitt is the economist behind the Freakonomics operation.

And PS it is incorrect for Dubner to say that Pollan dislikes specialization, I think. Pollan is not arguing that we should all grow all our own food (although he does encourage some gardening), and he has a great deal of admiration for specialists like the amazing farmer in his chapters on polyculture. He is arguing--I think--that when we have "specialists" growing single crops propped up by the government as they deplete the environment and make us all unhealthy, that isn't really efficiency. It just doesn't make any sense.