The difference between a fad and an institution is longevity. Is Starbucks a fad or an institution? I'm betting that the local food idea will be long-lived, passing from fad status into something more. There is something about Starbucks that appeals at the gut level, as does local cuisine.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Another interesting facet of the Irish potato famine is its relation to crop biodiversity. In Peru, center of origin for the potato, dozens of  varieties flourish to this day. It would be nearly impossible for a single disease to wipe out a significant portion of those varieties. Potatoes supported civilization there for centuries. In Ireland, the British overlords introduced only a few varieties of potatoes. Before long, a blight rose up to wipe them all out. Why didn't the Irish peasants simply eat something else grown in that famously rich soil? Because as JMG points out, the country's plentiful grain production continued getting shipped to Mother England during the famine.

A little later in the 19th century, a similar situation held forth in the Indian Raj, as Mike Davis documents in his brilliant Late Victorian Holocausts. Again, as crops failed and people starved to death by the millions, grain crops continued to make their way to England.

A century and a half later, many in the West, including people in positions of great power, are still urging people in the "developing world" to focus more on producing food for the global market  than for domestic consumption.

Victual Reality

For folks like me in rural America, prescriptions for a strictly local diet are an invitation to poverty and privation. Outside our all-too-brief growing season, the local diet in this area would be largely limited to beef, stored root crops, honey, and eggs... if we can find producers selling locally. We'd have to do without coffee, chocolate, seafood and citrus altogether.

And if all the farmers and ranchers in this area had to survive on sales to just the 10,000 or so folks nearby, most would go out of business or pursue some other line of work.

If we want to continue living out here, it seems we either have to grow our own crops and grind our own flours and butcher our own hogs, or endure the scorn of our privileged city cousins who think we're abusing our bodies and wasting fossil fuels and failing our local farmers.

The neighborhood farmers' market where producers sell their goods direct to the consumer is the ideal model for the local foods movement, and for good reason. When I lived in Seattle years ago, a daily visit to Pike Place Market supplied the fixings for almost every meal. The food was fresh, the producers made good money, and our fossil fuel consumption was minimal.

But not everyone can live in Seattle or central California or Florida. And not every farm can be located within an hour's drive of a busy market like Pike Place. Consumers need a wide selection of products available for purchase more than just once a week for a couple hours, and producers need a steady flow of buyers.

The imperative to "eat local" should be replaced, in my opinion, with the advice to "buy direct" whenever possible. Buying direct from the producer achieves the same benefits as buying local, but without the unrealistic geographic restrictions.

Only the farmer who grew the tomato, or who planted the corn or harvested the asparagus or raised the chicken, can tell you exactly how the food was grown. Only the farmer who sells direct to the consumer can explain how the final product was processed and brought to market.

Buying direct from the producer, whether from a subscription farm or open-air market or by mail-order, is the best way for food shoppers to ensure freshness, quality and safety in the products they buy.

Michael Hofferber Market Manager http://www.FarmersMarketOnline.com Buy Direct. Sell Global.

In its 10,000-year history, agriculture has generally meant eating locally -- and the specter of famine has always crept along at its edges, ready to pounce.

What?

You're omitting the entire history of trade on land and on sea in World History?!!

What about salt...it's use in preservation so edibles could be traded!

What about the Dutch East India Company -- coffee, spices, teas!

Figs, dates, potatoes, the list goes on and on of foodstuffs that have been stored, preserved, sailed, wagon wheeled around the world!

John Bailo
Sutext:

More threatening than famine, it seems to me, is the epidemic of obesity. According to a report released last week, the rate of obesity rose in 31 states last year. Although a number of variables are undoubtedly to blame---including lack of exercise and overeating--my gut tells me that the industrialized chain has something to do with this. A market flooded with highly refined corn-based products, such as the 800-calorie Double Big Gulp is a greater risk to public health a this point than the specter of hunger.

food thing as another market, not "the" market. Like Starbucks is one place to get coffee, but not "the" place to get it. The arguments for and  against local are mostly philosophical, like counting angels, until someone successfully lobbies government for mandates and or subsidies. The local market, like Starbucks, relies mostly on images and feelings. Rational argument backed by science does not usually work that well with the general public in any case. And other than using government as a tool to short circuit free markets, the economic arguments are also not under our conscious control. Consensus does not exist because we don't all have the same needs and desires (fantasies).

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

highly refined corn-based products,

I avoid these like the plague.   I always buy 100% juice...which limits my national brand choice to Ocean Spray Grapefruit and some orange juices.

I found a good lemonade, Santa Cruz, which uses cane sugar and is yummy.

My pet theory is the the high levels of CO2 in many areas prevents ideal oxidation for the human body, which is contributing to the fat problem.

John Bailo
Sutext:

John Bailo writes: You're omitting the entire history of trade on land and on sea in World History?!!

What about salt...it's use in preservation so edibles could be traded!

What about the Dutch East India Company -- coffee, spices, teas! Look at the foods you've cited, John. They are all high-value, low-weight foods that were luxuries in their time. As food gets more expensive to ship, I think we will see a return to that pattern of a few expensive luxuries, but with the bulk of food  produced and consumed locally. Grains and pulses may be an exception, since they are suited for storage and long distance transportation.

Michael Hofferber wrote: For folks like me in rural America, prescriptions for a strictly local diet are an invitation to poverty and privation. Outside our all-too-brief growing season, the local diet in this area would be largely limited to beef, stored root crops, honey, and eggs... if we can find producers selling locally. I think you under-estimate the ingenuity and resilience of rural people, Michael. If you look at the popular culture of the 19th century, people were bowled over by the abundance and variety of food available to farmers in America.

I was moved by an essay by Angelo Pellegrini, an Italian immigrant to Washington state at the turn of the century. Coming from peasant poverty, his eyes popped at the quantity and richness of the food. He was shocked at what people threw away.

(If you don't know who Angelo is, you cannot call yourself a real foodie! Read this this profile of Angelo from the NY Times archives.)

My wife's father grew up on a farm in rural Kansas, without electricity or running water. Even as a successful businessman, with access to all that the market had to offer, he still dreamed of his mother's strawberry preserves and angel food cake, cooked on a wood-burning stove.

The real reason that rural people turned away from their own local food was cost and convenience. Food became dirt cheap after the War, so why spend the time on it when you could buy Wonderbread and canned goods at the store? Also, there was the horrible snobbery against homegrown food and rural life in general -- aided and abetted by advertising.

The tide is turning -- food costs are going up, and those once-despised traditions of local food are now chic. About time!

Bart
Energy Bulletin

While JMG is correct to point out that, in many locales, we must learn or at least relearn how to live properly within the parameters of what the land can sustainably offer, I think we should also consider the idea that healthy rural communities have value which has been underappreciated. Perhaps our farmer friend would not have to rely so heavily on selling his product outside his rural community, and purchasing so much of his needs from "outside", if his rural community was more self-sustaining. The deterioration of our rural communities, such as they are, was not an inevitable process, as the lords of Chicago School economics would have us believe. Instead the withering of small-town America was the result of economic "policies" handed down from the seats of power, sold as a bill of goods by Madison Avenue, and swallowed as bitter medicine, even by the victims themselves.

I'll share an essay by Wendell Berry, which speaks to the ideas in this thread very well, I believe.