Ideal Bite

"It takes 4-17 times less oil to produce local food compared to nonlocal." Do you mean because of transportation? I have found that there is about 30% less energy used during organic agricultural production than with standard industrial production, but local and non-local production differs on methods of farming and not location. I have been doing some projects and research on food energetics, so if anyone has the cited source for these numbers, I would love to have them.

Myth busting, indeed. All you've done, as usual, is support more myths. Those potatoes from Peru could have traveled by boat and have a lower carbon footprint. There are many reasons to buy local, but there are many variables to take into account when assessing product impacts. The Bite loves simple solutions, but just like buying your way into sustainability, it's never that simple.

I love local foods. The thing that cheeses me off about Whole Foods is that their 'locally grown' consists mostly of New Hampshire and Vermont. They have ONE CT farm. There are tons of local farmers who produce wonderful things, just apparently not in the quantity that Whole Foods requires. I feel that 'locally grown' should apply to the state you live in. Even in the land of endless winter. Wild Oats did a better job of having truly local foods. Please, if anyone from WF is reading this, get more CT farms for your CT stores. Thank you.

Catherine - I have the opposite problem with Whole Foods. I live in Dallas, and they'll call a product "local" if it came from anywhere within the state of Texas. Texas is big. Sometimes products from Oklahoma or Louisiana are more "local" to me than items from many regions of my home state. Seafood from the gulf coast may be deemed local, but that's three hundred miles from here! I agree with the person who said that everyone needs to just do the best they can with what's available to them.

Im sorry this isnt about local produce, but about companies. (This is my comment to a post from a couple months ago, but I couldnt find it, so Im writing on this one.) Anyway, while I know that MANY natural and organic product companies are selling to the big corporate honchos, I personally feel I have to boycott Burt's Bees, since they not only sold out to a big league-er, but they sold to Chlorox! Chlorox is completely opposite of what I thought Burt's Bees was and stood for. Anyway, No more Burt!

This "local" garbage is just a lot of hype. Sorry, there is no way that dumping pesticides and herbicides and pollutants is "ok" just because it is local. This is like the fantasy that the Amish farms are quaint and wonderful- as Amish puppy farmers abuse puppies in terrible puppy mills!

And as far as "local" meat farmers go, they use the same polluting & abusive techniques that large factory farms do, as well as the same hormones and drugs. And the dairy farms ship their unwanted cows off to the same slaughterhouses, such as the Chino one that was busted recently. It is absolute naivete to think that "local" meat producers are any better. All meat producers are environmentally damaging in many ways. And they consistently oppose better humane laws "locally."

One big plus with buying local is that you can get to know the farmers and visit their operations to make your own decision as to whether it is the type of operation you want to support. Many local farmers DO use organic farming methods but may not actually apply to be "certified organic" because of the red tape involved. I would rather buy from a small local farmer who isn't certified organic than from a huge organic corporation (or worse yet the organic division of a conventional farming corporation) that is only following the certified organic rules to make a buck!

Mary beat me to comment about Michael Specter's fabulous piece in the NEW YORKER. If you care about all of this, read it! The equation for what's environmentally best to consume is large and with many, many variables. What's most upsetting is that as consumers, or even as gardeners ourselves, we don't really have the scientific knowledge to decry one food better than the other because in this case common sense just doesn't cut it. On a side note, while I wish I could afford to eat only organic veggies, they are often out of my price range ($5 per organic bell pepper? Are you kidding? Is this because the corporations selling vegetables in chain stores know they can squeeze that much out of us?). If green farming is so cheap, why do we not see the benefits on our debit cards? Can there be a Bite to address this question?

In response to Kitten's post, maybe one thing to consider is that local and/or organic food can't always be cheaper. We are so used to having access to inexpensive food available through corporate farming, but we may not be able to have better quality and the same low prices. I recommend the book Deep Economy by Bill McKibben for anyone interested in learning more about the impact of buying local and the trade offs we have to face in order to create real change with this issue.