I notice--apology in advance to OrangeClouds--that eating locally is beginning to emerge as a priority among the environmentally conscious among us. But I truly wonder whether it isn't just the idealistic "back to the land movement" in a new guise--this time, an ideological refuge for rather bohemian people who have time and money on their hands and happen to live in parts of the country that can support an expensive locavore lifestyle.
I just finished reading the book "Plenty"--the story of two writers, seemingly in their twenties, without any children or full-time job commitments. Living in Vancouver, they adopt a rigorous, 100-mile locavore lifestyle for a year. This involves some great sacrifice on their parts: no bread for 9 months out of the 12 because the one bag of flour they can find has mouse turds and weevils in it; few sweetened products because sugar is off limits; and very little salt (they finally go whole hog and make their own sea salt in the final chapter). But mostly, they revel in their wine and cheese and nuts and apple pies and expensive organic salmon.
The book was interesting and completely annoying at the same time. The authors--the male author more than the female--were completely convinced of the ecological beauty and purity of their adopted lifestyle and that it made perfect economic sense. But they also lived in a fertile area, where it was possible to get organic artisinal cheeses, and honeys, and wines, and they were willing to pay $128 for a single dinner for four. They were willing and able--without fulltime jobs or families--to spend entire days canning food, or biking around to different farmers' markets.
I have not gotten around to reading Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, but she followed pretty much the same path. Her family just happened to have farmland in Virignia, although they had lived for the past 10 years in Tucson. Finally, Kingsolver and her family moved away from Tucson because they found it environmentally unsustainable, and tried to live organically and locally on their Virginia farm for a year. But as excerpts printed elsewhere make clear, it only was a success because she was able to call on the resources of a large number of friends and neighbors who were more than mere farm-dabblers, to sell HER all her best produce so that she could (for example) have a big dinner party. Forgive me for thinking that her fame and fortune, and free time as a writer, played a role in her being able to afford her little-back to the land experiment.
My critique of locavorism is a class critique. I wish someone could convince me that this movement is anything other than members of the middle class slumming it as pretend subsistence eaters and farmers. I mean, Marie Antoinette had her little herd of cows and liked to pretend she was a dairymaid, too.
- Real, historical locavorism--subsistence farming as practiced by working-class farmers in this country before the 20th century--constantly teetered on the edge of grinding poverty. Regional crop failure meant you and your family didn't eat. Those farmers would have LOVED to have been able to generate some cash in order to make their diets and lives more various. The nostalgia about nature's bounty doesn't match the history.
- Comparative advantage means that our economy relies on some people farming, some people processing food, some people working in offices, some people fixing cars, some people doctoring . . . and no matter how fun it is to make your own jam and can your own vegetables, in an integrated economy ignoring comparative advantage does make us all poorer.
- As others have pointed out, we live in places that are distinctly unfertile or never meant for human habitation. There are large urban areas where little food is grown. There are other areas, like the desert where I live, which could only support a really poor variety of food crops were anyone even inclined to grow things there. Locavorism seems to ignore this.
- Locavorism is absolutely more expensive, especially when you take into advantage opportunity cost. Our money might be better spent feeding the hungry than in finding the best 100-mile artisinal cheese.
I completely understand the notion of peak oil, and know that it will not always be economical to ship fruit from Chile or steaks from Argentina. But I think there's a big difference between promoting more American food-self-sufficiency (salutary) and pretending that trying to limit your food intake to the nearest 100 miles is going to save the earth. I'd like us to talk about farm policy rather than retreat to our own little self-satisfied kitchens. Can you tell I'm annoyed? Come discuss it here.