Locavores or Loco-vores?

Unfortunately for locavores, the same fundamental economic realities that shaped the development of our globalized food supply chain are still very much with us.

Locavorism—a lifestyle philosophy that encourages people to eat only or mostly locally produced food—has gained many influential adherents in recent years, from the White House to parts of corporate America.
A puzzling feature of locavorism is that its adherents never ask themselves this most basic question: If things were so great when most of humanity’s supply was produced close to home, why was the globalized food supply chain developed in the first place?
There were actually many good reasons for going beyond one’s “foodshed.” Among other benefits, cost-efficient long-distance transportation made it possible to channel the surplus of regions that had experienced good harvests to those that had not, in the process ending famine in developed economies.
A larger food supply chain also delivered more diverse and better quality products at lower prices (otherwise nobody would have bothered moving large quantities of food over long distances in the first place) and resulted in significant health improvements. It created many new and better jobs in different lines of work outside the farming business as consumers had more money available to spend on things other than food. Large-scale monocultures delivered more food while using much less land, energy, and other resources than more diverse but less efficient small local operations. As a result, much marginal agricultural land in advanced economies was abandoned and eventually reforested while the energy footprint per unit of food was lowered.

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/september/locavores-or-loco-vores