Eating Local?

There's a growing movement to Eat Local.  I'm thinking of becoming a part of it.  No, wait.  I'm already on board.  It's just that my definition of local is probably different than most of the Eat Local proponents.

Along with just about every environmentalist, I consider myself a citizen of planet earth.  As a citizen, I'm pledging not to eat anything grown outside of my planet.  After all, what's a political boundary  but  an artificial line drawn by people with no bearing to ecological  relationships.   Etc.

However, Localvores, as they call themselves, use a different metric.  Some want to eat food grown only in  their state.  Taken to its extreme, why put the boundary at a state line?  Why not a county line? Or a town's boundary?  Why not eat only food grown on your road?  Why not be self sufficient in your household?  For tens of thousands of years that's how people lived.  And died.  Young.

During the month of August we've got the "Eat Local Challenge" which has been endorsed by many prominent politicians in Vermont.  In today's Herald, House Speaker Gaye Symington writes

Eating local means eating more nutritious and better tasting food. It also reduces the carbon footprint of our food system where, by one estimate, 90 percent of the fossil fuel energy used in the world's food system goes into packaging, transportation and marketing — not into actual production.

Maybe not.  A detailed and well researched article in the Boston Globe, which actually focuses on the Vermont Eat Local Challenge,  finds that

a gathering body of evidence suggests that local food can sometimes consume more energy -- and produce more greenhouse gases -- than food imported from great distances. Moving food by train or ship is quite efficient, pound for pound, and transportation can often be a relatively small part of the total energy "footprint" of food compared with growing, packaging, or, for that matter, cooking it.

One example is that

A bag of potatoes shipped from Idaho to Boston by rail... is likely to require less energy in transit than the same bag of potatoes driven from Maine to Boston in a farmer's truck.

And another factor, important to Vermont, should be troubling to the supporters of Vermont's largest agricultural industry:

And for cattle, the greatest climate impact comes not from hauling cows and milk and steaks around the country, but from cow burps. Cows are impressive emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas that is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide (contrary to popular belief, most of it comes out the front of the cow, not the rear). A cow with a bit of indigestion can contribute as much to global warming in a day as the average SUV.

Memo to legislators: Next session, you might consider putting a burp tax on cows.  Or maybe UVM researchers can develop a genetically engineered Prius-Holstein hybrid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Speaker Symington also cites Douglas Hoffer in her support of eating local.  Hoffer says

"If Vermont substituted local products for only 10 percent of the food we import, it would result in $376 million in new economic output, including $69 million in personal earnings from 3,616 jobs."

Does that imply that if we substituted local products for 50 percent of our imported food, we'd add more than 15,000 jobs?  I'm skeptical of these kinds of claims.  Most of us don't buy local food because of its cost, availability, or convenience.   The gains from specialization and trade, as Adam Smith noted 200 years ago, are very large and have allowed us to raise our standard of living dramatically.

Go ahead and eat locally if you want.  Most people won't.  The idea that Vermont's agricultural sector will ever become a larger part of the state's economy is very, very remote.

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[anonymous]

Speaker Symington also cites Douglas Hoffer in her support of eating local. Hoffer says

"If Vermont substituted local products for only 10 percent of the food we import, it would result in $376 million in new economic output, including $69 million in personal earnings from 3,616 jobs."

If Vermont is a leader (the world watching and following in our footsteps in every liberal cause and all), what would happen to our economy if everyone else decided to only eat local, too. Would Vermont's local farmers cry foul at a national campaign to not eat Vermont Maple syrup outside of Vermont. Or not drink Vermont Milk outside of Vermont. It seems to me very dumb for a state that has invested so heavily in a state brand name --for the expressed purpose of help spurring -- exports to be advocating against eating exported food items.

Particularly when, you know, we're a global leader when it comes to this sort of thing.