Question 1: The Locavore Movement

            Eating locally does not mean eating healthy or less strain on the environment. The locavore movement is promoting eating “locally” to help local farmers and to do less harm to the environment. But, if inspected closely, there is more harm than benefit. Buying locally may help local farmers but don’t forget about the people who work in corporate such as 1.5 million Sub- Saharan farmers. Also if a corporate farm ships 2000 apples over 2000 miles, that is more apple per gallon of gas than 50 apples from a local farm that traveled 50 miles. Also decentralized food systems would not function in today’s society.

            Locavores believe that eating locally is better for the environment rather than purchase groceries from a mega chain. That is not true though.. “A 2006 academic study discovered that it made more environmental sense for a Londener to buy a lamb shipped from New Zealand than to buy lamb raised in U.K.” (Source C McWilliams). New Zealand lamb is raised on the pastures with a small carbon footprint, whereas most English lamb is produced under intense factory-line conditions with a big carbon footprint.

            While localvorism sounds great on paper, it is ineffectively in reality. There is no set definition to what a locavore needs to eat. They might eat what is grown in their state or within a 50 mile boundary. “some areas might find it fairly easy to eat locally, people in other parts of the  country and world have to look farther afield.” (Source F. Roberts) Localvorism can be compared to communism in a sense that they both sound great on paper but in reality, don’t work out. Additionally localvorism tries to balance out local farming and corporate farming. But that is not possible with a large population to support, food has to be churned out as fast possible.

            The linkage of local farming to efficiently and sustainability is dubious. The locavore obsession with reducing food-miles has been debunked as a false economy that may actually worsen carbon emissions. That’s because the high-volume, long-haul food transportation perfected by industrial agricultural production in the world’s best locations has allowed much low-quality agricultural land to revert to a forested state; while the increasing concentration of people in cities has reduced our disturbance of wild areas.

          Because it would result in a less diversified, more expensive, and less safe diet, locavorism can only deliver the world of yesterday. As many subsistence farmer in any of the poorest regions of our planet can attest, t is a world where chronic hunger, malnutrition, and famine are always just one spell of bad weather away. Locavorism, far from healing what ails us, is a recipe for widespread human misery and ecological disaster.