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Comment by desdiv | Hacker News Reader

People need to keep in mind that buying local food isn't necessarily better for the environment. Sometimes local produce production produces far more greenhouse gases than imported produce: http://www.salon.com/2008/06/24/food_miles/

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That's quite true. To me the important thing to note is that while people in SF or Portland can feel smug about sourcing locally --I mean, it's great, it's nice to have fresh fruit and vegetables, I enjoy them myself living in this fecund area, the implicit bias or even superiority, is that they are better for having natural resources nearby than are people who live in metropolises which are far from the fruit of the earth.

It's at time a kind of virulent elitist bias in that they feel that they are naturally better --they are better for the fate of the planet than are people who rely on long distance transportation for their foodstuffs. to be clear, it's not many people who feel that way, but you can feel the vibe in the way they talk about it. It's very latent, but the feeling is there.

Afterall, few people can be like René Redzepi and source locally in areas not known for a cornucopia of harvests.

[edited out 'a kind of racism' for virulent elitist bias, at another poster's suggestion --I still think it's racism just not based on 'race']

I understand what you are trying to say, but classifying it as a type of racism is just incorrect.

Instead of "racism," how about "prejudice," "bias," or "elitism," or "bigotry?" Human races are already a cultural construct, no point in misusing a term by applying it to something that doesn't even have anything to do with ancestry.

I've edited the word 'race' out --but want to make the point that race is not based on ancestry. Its meaning can shift quite a bit. Recall the English thought German immigrants were an 'inferior race'. But as conceptualized in today's English, white Germans and white English are today considered the same 'race'. In vernacular speech 'racism' is equivalent to bigotry and also intolerance.

In your example, the English had a problem with Germans and people of German descent, that is, their ancestry. Nobody calls San Franciscans, Californians, "coastal people" (vs. Middle Americans), or "city folk" (vs. "country folk"), a race.

Understanding vernacular English is how I knew what you meant, that doesn't mean it's a good idea to poorly use a word that has a more specific meaning when there are plenty of more general words to convey your point.

I also have a problem with prejudice against muslims being called "racist" so using it to refer to San Franciscan localvore attitudes about the rest of the country didn't stand a chance.

fresh/freSH/ adjective

   1. not previously known or used; new or different.
   2. recently created or experienced and not faded or impaired.

What exactly makes these local foods qualify as "fresh" yet something imported and then purchased from a supermarket somehow does not qualify as "fresh?" Isn't "fresh" a subjective term that really only has a place in marketing circles to imply that it is somehow superior to other goods that may not be considered "fresh" by arbitrary means?

I'm not familiar enough with all the arguments and the studies the author cites as to come up with a careful rebuttal of "isn't necessarily better for the environment." I acknowledge the fact that local food consumption cannot scale as it is (or rather as it is in wealthy countries) to the point where it replaces the current system. The reasons are not simply farmers not investing fuel efficiency, or "[not having] the infrastructure in place like the big guys do." There are cultural aspects arising from the current food supply system that need to be overcome. I'm in a country (Panama) where most of the population resides in warm (24-32 C all year) areas. Still, except for grains and fruits, the food consumed by the not so rural population primarily comes from the temperate mountains. Sweet potatoes (widely consumed a couple generations ago) can be easily grown anywhere, they are instead mostly imported and not remotely as common as potatoes. The original article does a good job of emphasizing the cultural aspects of local food consumption. That culture still has to develop to the point where consumers expectations are not constrained by the dominant system. As long as local food has to adapt to those expectations, it will be to a considerable extent just an imitation, and indeed an inefficient one.

"Society should also consider the economic and social costs of local food systems, which could hold back the growth of developing nations." That's a statement I find particularly puzzling, and that shows the article's tendency to base its argument on effects that are not analyzed well enough within the system. The globalized food supply system, has since the Green Revolution, made poor countries become net importers of food. The "successes" have come at great social and environmental costs (ever heard of "Banana Republics").

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