But since I can only get them in season, and rarely then, I suspect that there is something to the "local, organic" myth after all.
How about the good quality tomatoes grown 1000 miles away, that could be economically shipped to you in a way that is less destructive to the environment than the first option, still taste as good and be cheaper? Not an option, because they don't conform to your arbitrarily chosen standard of being "local".
You are no better than the luddites.
There is nothing about mass production that lowers the quality. What lowers quality is the price point and the demand for the cheapest possible product. Shift it to some better balance between quality and price, and mass production would kill your cute little hobbyist farms in every single benchmark, including sustainability.
At the moment the "ecological"/"locally grown" meme is blocking this development.
That is a mechanical problem. It can and probably has been solved, except it's likely a bit more expensive than just chucking them into a box. Again, the price point.
Given that other people are indicating that THEIR Whole Foods has heirloom tomatoes year round and mine does not, and we're presumably all in the US (if we can go to Whole Foods) then that means I'm right! If Whole Foods could economically ship them to every store in the country, they'd do so! That means that there are some things which simply aren't economical to do at any scale other than local.
I don't have a local fetish where "local" == "better" for everything and in fact, you'll notice that I'm complaining about the lack of heirloom tomatoes, rather than bragging about it.
> You are no better than the luddites.
Way to jump to some conclusions and start in on the ad hominem! Congrats!
> Shift it to some better balance between quality and price, and mass production would kill your cute little hobbyist farms in every single benchmark, including sustainability.
Again, way to go on the attack for what reason exactly? What did stupid little hobby farms ever do to you? Why are you so hostile to the idea that a "luddite" could have a "small business" that they "own" alongside the industrial agriculture that you so desire? They're farming on a scale that'll never put major agribusiness in a bind so what does it matter?
The "local" fanatics might be annoying, but I'll grant them that at least they have a real beef with agribusiness buying up small farms and growing vast monocultures. That's a documented phenomena.
But what threat do small farmers pose for Monsanto? None, as far as I can tell. There's a revolving door between Monsanto and government, no such revolving door exists between any small farms and government.
I'm not saying that local is an unqualified good either, it's clearly qualified. There are some things that local is better at full stop.