Should you be a locavore? : A movement under the microscope: part I

The New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2007 was “locavore,” meaning someone who eats primarily foods produced within a certain distance of where they live, a proponent of the local-food movement.

Though you’ve most likely heard of the movement in association with global-warming issues, it does not conform to a single idea. Nor is “local food” synonymous with eating organic or sustainably produced food. It is the result of several unrelated grassroots organizations coming to similar solutions to a variety of economic, political, ecological and cultural concerns.

You can blame Mary Ann, a reader who wrote to me with a seemingly simple question, for this and the next few columns. Her simple question grew hydra-headed the more I looked at it and forced me to address the complex issues surrounding local food. (Just kidding about the blame, Mary Ann.)

She wrote: “I’ve noticed that some produce in the health food stores is labeled organic and it comes from Mexico or South America. Is ‘organic’ from other countries different and how do they compare to our [USDA] standards?”

It’s a good question, and the simple answer is, the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) has certifying agents in 20 countries currently, including Mexico and several in South America. Foods from those areas must meet the same standards as that grown here in order to carry an “organic” label.

Whew! That was easy, huh?

Until the questions start:

• What if that organic tomato has logged more travel miles than a bushel of frequent-flying executives?

• What about worker exploitation, child labor, Fair Trade concerns with imported food?

• How do worldwide food shortages, rising oil prices and food crops as biofuels factor into the equation?

• What do you put first, your family’s health, global warming, local economics, world food supplies or your imperiled sanity as you try to figure it out?

The concept of eating locally goes beyond organic vs. commercial food production. It directly intersects with all of the issues above, and more — sometimes in unexpected ways.

Over the next few columns I hope to address some of those intersections and offer resources you can use for further research or to help you make decisions in your own life.

This week, let’s take a quick look at how we ended up here in the first place. After all, “locavore” may be a new word but the concept is as old as agriculture in human history.

Growing, raising or trading food close to home has been the only option for most people for thousands of years. Only moneyed classes in large civilizations could take advantage of food surpluses, preservation techniques and the ability to move edible goods over long distances.

Beginning in the twentieth century, science developed processing, packaging and shipping technologies that could keep food for years – or move delicacies to far-flung destinations in a matter of hours.

Food production became agribusiness, using the same bigger-is-better model found in other industries. Transportation was cheap. Economies of scale sent food traveling to processing plants, distribution centers, nationwide supermarket and eventually into the global market.

One economist who questioned these giant-industry models was E.F. Schumacher. Though he never addressed local food specifically, he foresaw the consequences of resource-intensive industry and promoted an “economy of permanence, based on human values and sustainable uses of natural resources.”*

Schumacher believed giant industry was dehumanizing, wasteful of both resources and human potential. Sustainable societies and economies could be best accomplished through human-sized community and regional interactions.

His writings, including the 1973 book “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered,” promoted “decentralism” and became the basis of much of the thought behind local-food advocacy – economically, ecologically and culturally.

Next week: “Results of, and alternatives to, eating locally.”

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