Local and Traded Food

Reasonable people may believe that there are relative benefits to be derived from locally-produced food and from food traded over a longer distance (including internationally). Local food advocacy has become very prominent, and its views have often been expressed at the expense of traded food. While not disputing the value of local food, it appears to have acquired a very heavy ideological burden: Local food is good for (local) farmers, it is good for consumers, for the environment, for the local economy, and for overall health and nutrition. Moreover, local food is represented as being fresher (no matter how long after harvesting it is purchased), it is safer, and it tastes better. This is a lot to expect of food simply on the basis of how far away from a consumer it was grown.


On the other hand, internationally-traded food is often villified, regardless of the type of food it is, who produced it (and under what conditions), who sold it, or who prepares or eats it. Take as one example the International Society for Ecology and Culture's report on "Rethinking California's Food Economy," which states that "economic globalization is at the heart of almost every problem of the food system."


While international trade is only one component of "economic globalization," and food is only one set of products traded internationally, this is a heavy burden for international-traded food to bear. It is time to rationally re-assess and begin to re-engineer the international trade in food before we are all forced by locavores to grow our own or the industrial food giants to eat theirs.