Boston Globe article

"The Localvore's Dilemma"

Somebody at the Globe has been paying attention.

A friend of ours brought up this same concern this weekend, as we were floating lazily down the Nashua River by kayak, watching the food chain at work. Barn swallows swooped crazily over the water, snatching junior dragonflies mid-flight. Muskrats pulled up mouthful after mouthful of grasses. Great blue herons stalked fish and frogs. Cows in a nearby field... produced methane. (We paddled faster through that stretch.)

I know that our container garden wouldn't exist without interstate trucking. The pickle buckets and the name-brand potting soil certainly found their way to Middlesex County, MA, at least partially by truck -- to say nothing of their constituent materials.

And you know what? This is an experiment. It doesn't have to be guaranteed to succeed, or be sensible, before we've tried it. What matters the most is that we keep our eyes open and honest, and learn from trying. What do you think?

Comments

[samm]

I think trying is everything! I envy you your river journey. Cows and all! samm

[Liz]

It can be complicated, can't it?

I think that as long as you are eating local food because you believe in small farms and that the food you can get locally tastes better, that's all that matters. If you're eating locally because of your carbon footprint, well, it's all to easy to get bogged down by all the things you *can't* do.

It doesn't have to be perfect, and it certainly doesn't have to be 100% local, but I think it helps a whole lot if we rediscover the concept of seasonality. It wasn't all that long ago that eating out of season was a shocking innovation.

[Amber]

(I came over from Yarnstorm from your comment about homemade mozzerella. Now I'll have to poke around and find that post!)

Fascinating! I have often wondered about the further environmental aspects of the new foodie-ism, including the movement to eat and buy locally. I've always figured it's not an end-all and be-all solution.

However, fostering a connection with food by growing some of one's own, paying attention to how the purchased food is grown and produced and transported - I think it's very important. Moreover, if there hadn't been such a very strong grassroots movement to eat locally grown food, would there be an article in The Boston Globe about Life Cycle Engery Assessments for food? Would anyone read it? Maybe it will inspire some "localvores" to also look at ways of encouraging train transit rather than truck transit. Or begin to focus also on non-processed foods or responsibly processed foods. Frozen foods almost certainly have a greater environmental impact than canned foods.

It's hard to keep fighting the good fight and moving forward and changing tactics as we learn more about the good fight. But it's always worth working on and following through with.