4 ms·
I'm unsure of the advantages you describe in your second paragraph: 1) Seasonal isn't an advantage; I'd much rather be able to enjoy broccoli (or whatever) all
by philk 17y ago
I'm unsure of the advantages you describe in your second paragraph:
1) Seasonal isn't an advantage; I'd much rather be able to enjoy broccoli (or whatever) all year round rather than have to make do with it for a quarter of the year.
2) Local food doesn't have a lower environmental impact. The argument made is that food isn't being transported as far, hence their is less fuel burned in delivering it. However, the energy cost of moving food around - in trucks and on container ships, is remarkably low compared with the other costs in growing food. Much more energy is expended getting the food home to the consumer than getting it to the store, regardless of where it came from. As people often travel further to get to farmers markets than supermarkets (not to mention getting food home delivered) this causes local food to have a bigger environmental footprint.
3) I dont' have a problem with any of the other things in my life being "arbitrated by huge multinational corporations", so I'm unsure why I should care when it comes to food. As long as the "huge multinational corporations" aren't large enough to form a monopoly (or oligopoly) I'm not disadvantaged.
4) I don't want a relationship with my food supplier beyond them giving me food and me giving them money as I don't really have time for this - and if I had the free time I'd rather spend it on something else.
5) Traceability is a good thing, however large companies are making progress in achieving this through RFID. Systems which make use of this have been in place for a while on some products, for example meat in Japan.
6) I've had food from farmers markets and from organic suppliers. In both cases I heard people promote the food as 'tasting better', however I found it tasted the same in the former case and worse in the latter. I suspect that this is more a psychological effect, if you're ponying up twice the cash for bananas you might experience them as tasting better. Taste is, after all, subjsective.
7) Finally, your post seems to be predicated upon the idea that corporations are evil (TM) while small farmers are honest salt-of-the-earth types. Neither is true.
- vlod 17y agoComing from the other side of the pond (I'm a Brit) and growing up where my folks grew their own vegetables, I've really been turned off by a lot of the stuff churned out by corporations and labelled 'food'. In regard to taste, it's simply not true that all year round food tastes the same as something that is in season. Im not talking about organics here. Heck I grew my own tomatoes in my back yard and they were 95% better than the stuff in supermarkets. Buy some strawberries from a major supermarket, cut them open. They are not not supposed to be white inside. That's because of the manufacturing warehouse process. They are supposed to be super sweet. Usually they are not. Buy some tomatoes. Same deal. Cut it open and examine the cell structure.. Half the time it either whitish and tasteless or the cell structure looks collapsed and will rot real-soon-now. Buy some on-the-vine fancy tomatoes (from your local farmers market).. notice how sweet they taste and how red they look once you slice them.. thats because they've been allowed to ripe naturally. The other thing I find scary is that if I buy apples from the supermarket it takes forever for them to rot. That simply is not right. Personally I prefer to eat stuff that's in season, so my menu changes as the year progresses. I try real hard not to buy stuff from major supermarkets. I find it's usually cheaper to buy stuff from your local farmers market (go late in the day when they are trying to get rid of everything) or local grocer store which gets supplied from farmers. Oh I'm not some fancy shmancy foodie hippie. I just want decent food for a reasonable price.
- timcederman 17y agoYou should watch the episode of Bullshit! where they get people who claim such differences to try and differentiate between local/organic and 'regular' fruit and vegetables.
- tptacek 17y agoYeah, that's nice. On the other hand, Cooks Illustrated compared off-season supermarket tomatoes to canned tomatoes and concluded that you shouldn't even bother buying "fresh" tomatoes. Who do I trust more, Cooks Illustrated or Penn and Teller? The issue here isn't about whether your food has some meaningless "organic" label on it. That's a straw man argument. "Locavorism" isn't about going to the market and buying the shit they mark up an extra 50%. It's about not buying low quality mass market out-of-season industrial food.
- vlod 17y agoYep.. nothing wrong with canned tomatoes. They are usually picked when they are ripe. I use them and they're great. However I'm partial to fresh food as well, salad/sandwichs/salsa.
- vlod 17y agoThats why I tried to stay clear of the whole organic verses non-organic debate. I would agree that it's probably next to impossible to tell the difference between an organic tomato and one thats been sprayed with chemicals, but thats not quite what I'm talking about. It's food thats grown 'normally' (in a field) and picked that day and sold to you, verses food that in huge climate controlled warehouses, picked way too under ripe and put in shipping containers with gas chemicals that cause them to 'look' ripe but taste like crap.