It should also be noted that food from non-local sources is not necessarily "industrial". For example, there are organic coffees, grown sustainably on small holdings, that are available worldwide. Pepper and other spices, too. Sure, the transportation itself is a bit of a problem, but it's a tiny part of the larger problem. There some small grey areas that we surely can manage to sustain. Modern sailing ships can do an adequate job of such transportation, even in the worst scenarios.On Feb 14, 2010, at 9:05 PM, Kate Spinner wrote: He has a valid point about how our nation's appetite for a diversity of food runs counter to the ideal of 100 percent local sourcing. I have serious doubts that meals made from all local ingredients will ever become mainstream outside of a massive natural disaster or severe economic depression. The author's nod to imported wines underscores the point. I think the author, though too heavy-handed in his approach, is calling for a realistic goal in which local food, imports and industrial food - produced in a more responsible - manner coincide. On the other hand, I think he grossly misses the reality that most people who are seeking out now local food are not doing so with an all or nothing mindset. On Feb 14, 2010, at 12:35 PM, Tradingpost wrote:
I think this guy need to get out more. He needs to see how people
have done it for centuries and see what's happening already.
A Balance Between the Factory and the Local Farm
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/14every.html
By DAMON DARLIN Published: February 13, 2010
INDUSTRIAL food production is not very fashionable right now.
Three books by Michael Pollan criticizing the system of giant
corporate farms and food factories have topped the best-seller
lists. A graphic documentary, “Food, Inc.,” based in part on his
books, has been nominated for an Academy Award.
In Washington, Michelle Obama grew vegetables on the White House
lawn as an example of self-sufficiency. And across America, more
farmers’ markets and restaurants have popped up that sell vegetables
and meat produced on small farms.
Diners now scan the menus at their local restaurants for provenances
like “Cattail Creek Ranch lamb” or “Hudson Valley rabbit.” And home
cooks now await boxes of fresh produce delivered weekly from local
growers.
Some of these so-called locavores may think they are part of a
national movement that will replace corporate food factories with
small family farms. But as much of the East Coast lies blanketed
beneath a foot or more of snow, it’s as good a time as any to raise
a few questions about the trend’s viability.
First, how practical is local food sourcing in a nation that enjoys
a diversity of food? From a practical standpoint, there isn’t much
that can be grown in winter in most parts of the country.
“You can dig parsnips out of the ground,” said the chef Payton
Curry, referring to his native state of Minnesota. “It’s 10 below
there.” Mr. Curry features locally sourced food at his Caffe Boa
restaurants in Tempe and Mesa, Ariz.
The problem isn’t confined to the snow belt. Recently, I asked a
neighbor who was bringing in her weekly box of locally grown produce
what she got this time. “Kale,” she said. “A lot of kale.” And this
is in Northern California.
Then there are the inconsistencies in locavore behavior. People who
eagerly order microgreens — tenderly cut with scissors by a farmer
that morning — would be scandalized if a Chilean grape was served
next to them.
But their wine and water? Those tend to be shipped in from far-flung
places. Rarely, for example, do you hear a New York restaurant
bragging of its Long Island wine. Even at Chez Panisse, the
Berkeley, Calif., restaurant where Alice Waters got the whole local-
ingredients trend started, two out of three wines on a recent
evening — the wine list changes daily — did not come from the
acclaimed wine regions that begin only 25 miles away.
A friend of Mr. Curry’s, Pavle Milic, has gone to the extreme of
serving only Arizona-made wines at FnB, his small restaurant in
Scottsdale, Ariz. The concept may surprise some customers, but he
says that some of the same people who sneer at a Pillsbury Casa
Blanca Pinot Gris from Cochise County will declare in blind taste
tests that they thought it came from a famous wine-growing region.
“I develop a thick skin here with what I do,” he said. And he
acknowledges that “I risk losing a guest who doesn’t want to drink
an Arizona wine.”
Granted, wine doesn’t have to be fresh to be good. And freshness is
the compelling reason driving the locavore movement. Unlike organic
food, which can taste no different from food grown with chemicals,
fresh food does taste better.
But what started as an effort to source fresher ingredients from
nearby family farms is now as much about reducing the carbon
footprint and the “food miles” of food. Ordering water from the
South Pacific island of Fiji or wine from New Zealand when the local
stuff is quaffable seems to run counter to those ideals.
PEOPLE who grow vegetables in empty lots and schoolyards have a
nice, wholesome hobby — but one that can make little sense
economically. A few years ago, William Alexander wrote a delightful
book chronicling his gardening travails, “The $64 Tomato.” He
revealed a truth about do-it-yourself gardening: It is more
efficient to buy a fresh tomato in the farmer’s market for $1.50 a
pound.
(In San Francisco, where I live, that means going to a market
patronized largely by immigrants, not the foodie-dominated ones with
inflated prices that put fresh food out of the reach of the poor. )
As a sustainable trend, localism bears at least some resemblance to
Mao Tse-tung’s Great Leap Forward. In the late 1950s, Mao decreed
that steel production be localized in backyard steel furnaces.
Villagers began melting down pots and pans and creating their own
steel, which amounted to low-quality and largely useless pig iron.
It was a bad idea that dragged down the nation’s productivity and
played a role in widespread famine.
Localism is difficult to scale up enough to feed a whole country in
any season. But on the other extreme are the mammoth food factories
in the United States. Here, frequent E. coli and salmonella bacteria
outbreaks are the food industry’s version of Toyota’s sudden-
acceleration and braking problems. It may be a case of a
manufacturing system that has grown too fast or too large to be
managed well.
Somewhere, there is a happy medium.
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