Fast food, "buy local", and insanity

Every once in a rare while, a student, like "M", walks over to my office, slowly sits on the chair and says something like "I am surprised you had that article for us to read."  The explanation they have is that their expectation and understanding that I walk around with a certain political ideology does not match the readings I have for the class.

I suppose it is because of two streaks in me--the "libertarian" within the left-of-center framework, and the preference for clarity and truth irrespective of ideology!  I think these are the same reasons why I have always been drawn to George Orwell, and in contemporary times, to Christopher Hitchens.  Orwell's sympathies for the left-of-center did not prevent him from writing the powerfully influential 1984 and Animal Farm, which were/are both highly critical of socialism and the Soviet Union, when it was not at all fashionable for intellectuals to be anti-socialism.  There was then only only one breed of intellectuals--leftists.  All others were deemed not only as not being intellectual, but as anti-intellectuals.  (Such a world still exists at my place of work which has quite a few self-professed socialist colleagues!)

I am sure that Orwell would not like to be associated with fans like me, though :)

One of the "contrarian" readings that throws off students is anything that critiques the fashionable "buy local" movement.  In the first place, it irritates me that they could not even employ proper grammar--it ought to be "buy locally" and not "buy local"--if the latter, then "local" is a product that we can purchase as much as we can say "buy tomatoes."  It ought to be "buy locally" because, well, brush up on the verb/adverb aspects of English grammar!

"Locavore" which gained enough popularity to even sneak into the dictionary, makes us focus on the geography--local--as opposed to the larger issues of health and well being.  Locavore does not make any economic sense:

Local food is generally more expensive than non-local food of the same quality. If that were not so, there would be no need to exhort people to "buy local." However, we are told that spending a dollar for a locally produced tomato keeps the dollar circulating locally, stimulating the local economy. But, if local and non-local foods are of the same quality, but local goods are more expensive, then buying local food is like burning dollar bills—dollar bills that could have been put to more productive use. The community does not benefit when we pay more for a local tomato instead of an identical non-local tomato because the savings realized from buying non-local tomatoes could have been used to purchase other things. 

 The "rootedness" of the locavore movement is remarkably stupid when you compare it against the history of humans on this planet:

Our agrarian ancestors may well have been more connected to the land, but they died younger, spent little time in education due to the need for human labour and rarely travelled far from their place of birth. They also made appallingly inefficient use of the land and natural resources.

But, how about locavores as an environmental movement?

After an extensive literature review, other researchers have concluded that "it is currently impossible to state categorically whether or not local food systems emit fewer [greenhouse gasses] than non-local food systems."8 Minimizing the use of natural resources entails producing food in the least-cost location, which will not typically be local.

And other effects of closing off:

The idea that localism will bring resilience is also seriously mistaken. An insular community which does not trade regionally or internationally is at risk from the most basic threats, such as crop failure due to local extremes of weather. The evidence for this is all too apparent in the developing world. In a global community, local crop failure is not a life-or-death issue since food can be temporarily imported in exchange for other goods or services. During times of plenty, excess food can be exported and the long-term surplus and deficit balanced out. The community is buffered against extremes of weather through international trade. While an isolated village has to depend on its own grain store to smooth out times of feast and famine, a trading nation has the entire world as its grain store.

I suppose locavores will be great fans of North Korea then :)

In urban planning, we often reminded ourselves that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I am a fellow traveler when it comes to the feel good intentions of localism.  When I travel, I try--as much as possible--to eat local foods.  I do enjoy the fresh-off-the-garden tomato, whenever a neighbor gives me a few.  But, that is it.

How much such insanity exists is best illustrated in this following Daily Show clip.  While it is not about localism, it is about the idiocy that results from wanting to do the right thing but in the most illogical ways

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
San Francisco's Happy Meal Ban
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