oh one other thing. I don't think by me using an example of people trying to freeze or put up apple local apples as a place to start means that I was saying nobody (including people having trouble making the rent) should get to eat apples. I think I even admitted earlier in this post that I have a bowl of New Zealand Galas on my counter.

bjt

I found this article in the New York Times that better expresses some of what I was trying to say when it comes to the "green" movement - that it has become inexorably intwined with consumerism, and not for the better. Many people seem to be doing things because they sound good without considering the effect of their choices.

Case in point: grocery bags - the issue is the production of grocery bags, not their use. It will take a really significant number of people not using the bags before an individual store reduces its inventory; in turn it will take a significant reduction in orders for the manufacturer to produce fewer bags, which probably have production runs in the millions. In the meantime, while it doesn't hurt, I'm not sure how much energy we've saved by a small number of people refusing plastic bags. OTOH, turning down your thermostat or biking to work has a direct effect on the amount of energy you're using. So some "little" things have more of an effect than others, but they seem to be presented with equal weight.

While nobody on this thread has said that their intent is to reduce inexpensive factory-farmed foods, I'm pointing out that it's something that is linked to this topic: I've often heard that we should press the government to stop subsidizing agribusiness so consumers pay the "real" cost of food. While it seems sensible to increase local food production and use foods in a reasonable manner, I want to make sure that we don't forget that there are people who depend on the foods produced through government subsidy, and that we need to find a solution to the issue of hunger while we search for a solution to our concerns about the environment.

Yes, but the government subsidy is paid for by taxpayers, so then we have to ask, if we're sticking the taxpayer for the bill regardless, is corporate welfare for agribusiness the best way to ensure kids have a decent lunch, or is it about the worst and something else, like expanding food stamps, might well cost less overall even as prices for staples shoot up? (Not that there's likely to be a constituency for lower taxes/higher prices at the present moment of government policy, but a guy can dream.)

Anyway, these arguments all seem very distant from my actual practice of buying farmer's market stuff because I prefer buying stuff that way, and I regard any argument that the practices of the first 5,950 years of agriculture (they grow it, I buy it from them and eat it) are somehow worse for the planet than hyperindustrialized agriculture as likely being the malefic spin of hellspawn PR demons.

Mhays wrote:Case in point: grocery bags - the issue is the production of grocery bags, not their use. It will take a really significant number of people not using the bags before an individual store reduces its inventory; in turn it will take a significant reduction in orders for the manufacturer to produce fewer bags, which probably have production runs in the millions. In the meantime, while it doesn't hurt, I'm not sure how much energy we've saved by a small number of people refusing plastic bags.

The issue with plastic bags as I understand it is about waste and mindless consumption, i.e., that a plastic bag used for 3 minutes to cart two items from the grocery store to the house lives in a landfill forever. Europeans, and even Americans some fifty years ago, use and have used for many years reusable sacks for groceries and that's a small change that frankly should be made that I think can be gradually instituted broadly and permanently. While reusuable sacks might eventually drive down production of plastic bags, I don't understand that to be the short-term goal.

Again, I'm not saying that corporate agriculture is the answer - certainly I'm doing all I can to change school lunches so that they contain less processed food. I'm saying that we have to think about the hunger issue and make sure it doesn't get left behind as we try to change our agricultural system.

Mhays wrote: In the meantime, while it doesn't hurt, I'm not sure how much energy we've saved by a small number of people refusing plastic bags.

I always refuse bags if I'm getting just a few things that I can easily carry, but if it's more than that, I'll always take a plastic bag. Plastic bags can be recycled many times; paper bags can't be recycled over and over - the fibers break down. I'm amazed that Whole Foods made the anti-green decision to eliminate plastic bags ... their rationale, I believe, was that, even though plastic bags are more recyclable, most people choose not to recycle them. So why not educate people to recycle their plastic bags?

Mhays wrote:I found this article in the New York Times that better expresses some of what I was trying to say when it comes to the "green" movement - that it has become inexorably intwined with consumerism, and not for the better. Many people seem to be doing things because they sound good without considering the effect of their choices.

Now that I read the article, I can comment. I guess I feel like sure, there will always be people who mindlessly jump on the trend wagon. The problem I have with the article is that it assumes that people will consume more if they're consuming green things. It also assumes that the only thing people are doing to help the environment is buying products marketed as green and not, say, reducing their gas consumption (if only because they have to) and biking to work. Given that people's paychecks are slimmer to nonexistent, consumption in general is down.

What I also don't like is the article focuses on seemingly class warrior activists who sneer at the mainstream folks who participate in the green movement through their pocketbooks and proclaim that they're just a bunch of hypocrites whose actions should be dismissed. So, unless you're willing to live in a grass hut on a vacant lot powered exclusively by solar panels and you don't purchase one thing for an entire year (like some of the "activists" in the article), you're a hypocrite, you're not welcome to participate in the movement, and you should go back to your high consumption ways. Towards the end, the article (finally) addresses these folks and warns:

NY Times wrote:One reason mainstream groups may be wary of criticizing Americans’ consumption is that before the latest era of green chic, these large organizations endured years in which their warnings about climate change were scarcely heard.

Much of the public had turned away from the Carter-era environmental message of sacrifice, which included turning down the thermostat, driving smaller cars and carrying a cloth “Save-a-Tree” tote to the supermarket.

Now that environmentalism is high profile, thanks in part to the success of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the 2006 documentary featuring Al Gore, mainstream greens, for the most part, say that buying products promoted as eco-friendly is a good first step.

“After you buy the compact fluorescent bulbs,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, “you can move on to greater goals like banding together politically to shut down coal-fired power plants.”

That I agree with. So maybe it starts with buying fruit from local farmers and participating in creating and sustaining that market, then it progresses to something else. But I don't think having a market for local foods (no matter how affluent and/or hypocritical those consumers might be) is or ever will be a bad thing.

nr706 wrote:I always refuse bags if I'm getting just a few things that I can easily carry...

This reminds me of a recent trip I made to The Home Economist in Skokie to buy one specific item. I took what I needed from the bulk bin and put it in a bag and brought the bag to the counter. The check out person asked me "do you need a bag?". I replied, "It's already in a bag." Even though I was smiling, she gave me a nasty look as if to say, "you're an a-hole."

eatchicago wrote:

nr706 wrote:I always refuse bags if I'm getting just a few things that I can easily carry...

This reminds me of a recent trip I made to The Home Economist in Skokie to buy one specific item. I took what I needed from the bulk bin and put it in a bag and brought the bag to the counter. The check out person asked me "do you need a bag?". I replied, "It's already in a bag." Even though I was smiling, she gave me a nasty look as if to say, "you're an a-hole."

I am an a-hole. But I still refuse bags whenever it's practical.

The weakness in the whole system, as far as I can tell, is that one still needs to bag their garbage. Fix that and I'll use less bags.

I know composting and recycling reduces the amount of garbage we have (and look to the Local Beet for some forthcoming composting advice by MAG). Still, there's always some garbage, and for that garbage I re-use whatever bags I get.

Vital Information wrote: Still, there's always some garbage, and for that garbage I re-use whatever bags I get.

Those plastic grocery bags come in handy for cleaning the litter box at home. I also use the plastic grocery bags to carry my lunch for work. Not "green" necessarily, just common sense.

jimswside wrote:

Vital Information wrote: Still, there's always some garbage, and for that garbage I re-use whatever bags I get.

Those plastic grocery bags come in handy for cleaning the litter box at home. I also use the plastic grocery bags to carry my lunch for work. Not "green" necessarily, just common sense.

lol, common sense 50 years ago would dictate that your cat lived in the barn, ate rats and shit outside. I do the same as you, but find it funny how quickly habits change w/ technology and new products. but the cat doesn't change

fluffy does not shit, she leaves doodies.

Nut-covered chocolate cat clusters, in my family.

jimswside wrote:Those plastic grocery bags come in handy for cleaning the litter box at home. I also use the plastic grocery bags to carry my lunch for work.

I am all for recycling, but this takes it too far.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when hamburger was considered a luxury item. Our food policy was changed to focus directly on the cheap production of corn, soy, and wheat and this lead to beef that is priced astoundingly below what it once ones (adjusted for inflation). The fact that fresh produce is now considered a luxury item is exact problem that "locavores", myself included, are trying to address through demand and new policy.

With all due respect, to decry a movement because a portion of it caters to the affluent and that it hasn't completed it's goal is very cynical and I find the generalization about those who "spearheaded the movement" to be unfair and borderline insulting

I'm a supporter of locovorism to the extent that high-quality, high-taste, locally grown foods encourage families to make a meal together and to sit down and eat together. I think that buying locally grown from farmers markets does this, though its expensive.

There may be other arguments for locovorism. For example, growing marginal food crops may be a lower-cost-to-entry route into agriculture for young farmers, with a high cash return. And since our farm community is now dangerously old, that may be a good thing.

I don't hear too many proponents of locovorism and organic making their cases without trashing conventional farming. I work with farmers, they're the hardest working people I know. The ones I work with are far more knowledgeable and science-based in their discussions about farming methods and food production than just about anyone I've run across.

While I'm a proponent of locovorism for the reasons stated above, it's been advocated for on less than concrete grounds and my education was fairly strict in saying "ask the question" .... " do good science " ..... "live with the results." In too many food movements, our biases and emotions generate the answer and then we attempt to reverse engineer the science.

That can have negative consequences as we've seen with the change in composting regulations to facilitate large-scale organic vegetable production. We wanted organic and then compromised the science to get it. Hello salmonella.

Look at the old menus at the Berghoff and they were killing and cooking and serving everything that moved in the Midwest but people. Emmot Dedmon's Fabulous Chicago has an old turn of the centure menu illustrating this as well. We were the ultimate locovores and the result of that is that much of the wild game disappeared entirely from our geography. And that was when the population was a fraction of what it is today.

It's a science based fact that as societies become more affluent, meat consumption goes up. Everywhere in the world, whether they grow corn/wheat/soy or not. U.S. food policy did not create thousands of miles of corn fields. Our grandparents success and resulting purchasing behavior did, our parents continued that and we are sustaining it. My point is that the policy changes referenced in the quote above, if they are to be effective in reducing meat consumption, should not focus first on farming. Farming will follow and adjust itself for demand. But here and in other parts of the world, does not create demand.

Our industrial food production system is a reflection of us now feeding 300 million people on less and less land. Population growth and industrialization have walked in lock-step in food and most other areas. Not a lot of kids want to work on the farm. It doesn't pay well and the work is unkind and dangerous (so machines and technology make it possible for fewer to feed more).

I'm not clear where locovores and others who are anti conventional agriculture are drawing the line and perhaps that's by design. Is there a farm size that's appropriate? Is, say 499 acres ok, but 501 acres is not? Is this the same for technology? For example, is it ok for 10 farmers with 499 acres and smaller farms to pool their money and buy a piece of equipment such as a combine harvester but not for one farmer with 2,000 acres to buy the same piece of equipment? Or, is the farm size and equipment not a difference maker?

Since we're already on a path to "change policy" these would be really good things to share.

Might the policy get into true sustainability metrics. For example, should it set a cap on global warming impact per acre per year. This could be measured scientifically by a direct assessment of individual farm consumption and farming practices, inclusive of outbound shipping. This would give an accurate assessment of gwi, but would put the incredibly inefficient and low-tech smaller farms at a huge disadvantage (science will do that to you sometimes).

And so by "changing policy" and advocating for locovorism because its said by its advocates (are any of them farmers?) to be more environmentally sustainable, are we actually accelerating global warming. Do we know? And if we don't, is it really smart to "change policy."

Chatted with a farmer a couple weeks ago. He farms a few hundred central Illinois acres and rents a couple hundred additional. He's third generation on the farm. I was telling him that Walmart is going to start sourcing vegetables locally because people wanted to buy food with fewer food miles."

He smiled and said, "why don't they just buy a farm and work it."

I guess since I was quoted at the beginning of the previous post, the onus falls on me to continue the discussion (although after reading and re-reading, I'm not 100% sure what in my quote leads to the points made).

auxen1 wrote:I don't hear too many proponents of locovorism and organic making their cases without trashing conventional farming. I work with farmers, they're the hardest working people I know. The ones I work with are far more knowledgeable and science-based in their discussions about farming methods and food production than just about anyone I've run across.

We seem to be continuing the process of setting up straw men and knocking them down. So far we've beaten up the mysterious locavore who says you should never ever eat from beyond 100 miles, the locavore who thinks poor people should starve, and now the locavore who think conventional farmers are lazy idiots.

auxen1 wrote:I'm not clear where locovores and others who are anti conventional agriculture are drawing the line and perhaps that's by design. Is there a farm size that's appropriate? Is, say 499 acres ok, but 501 acres is not? Is this the same for technology? For example, is it ok for 10 farmers with 499 acres and smaller farms to pool their money and buy a piece of equipment such as a combine harvester but not for one farmer with 2,000 acres to buy the same piece of equipment? Or, is the farm size and equipment not a difference maker?

I'm not sure this is the right forum to start discussing political policy initiatives, but I will try to speak to this point. You are deflecting the point to "farm size" where in reality the concern is what happens to the food that is made. I'd love to see a farm as far as the eye can see that supplies fresh lettuce, onions, peppers, garlic, etc. to everyone around at low prices, rather than filling up coke cans with corn syrup and feeding huge amounts of cattle that keep fast-food burgers cheaper than a peach.

We're talking about encouraging people to change the way they eat. Part of the reason our country eats a ton of garbage is because we've created a ton of cheap garbage through focusing our crops in relatively few directions. Does that mean that the farmers doing it are evil, dumb, or wrong? No. They're hardworking people trying to feed their families and they're doing it by producing a product that is in high demand.

----------------------------

Frankly, I'm really shocked that here we have a movement that advocates for the consumption of more farm-fresh produce and people seem to have a big problem with that.

On a food forum.

eatchicago wrote: Frankly, I'm really shocked that here we have a movement that advocates for the consumption of more farm-fresh produce and people seem to have a big problem with that.

On a food forum.

OK, then what is the substantive difference between a locavore and a gourmet? If you say there isn't one, then I'm fine with that - it's that there seems to be some other ideology beyond saying this is better quality food, why don't you try it.

I feel compelled to jump back in here: I made the original post on a day I was cranky and snarky (some would say manish tanah ha lailah ha zeh).

I like the idea of eating local goodies when they're good.
I like the idea of eating non-local fresh goodies when the local stuff gets boring.

Mhays wrote:OK, then what is the substantive difference between a locavore and a gourmet? If you say there isn't one, then I'm fine with that - it's that there seems to be some other ideology beyond saying this is better quality food, why don't you try it.

This question (and this thread as a whole) perfectly captures why I try not to use the word "locavore" at all. I don't use it in describing my website, I try not to use it to describe myself.

There are many reasons why someone would choose to eat locally. (Acutally, auxen1 revealed another reason that is totally new to me.)

Using the label "locavore" tends to draw people into this trap of pigeonholing them into a single, well-defined ideology that is rigid, focused, and universally subscribed to. The reality is that people who eat locally do it for a variety of reasons. I do it for many reasons, and depending on which day you ask me, I might tell you a different one that matters most to me.

One of my top reasons is culinary culture. I'm opposed to a homogeneous food culture. It bothers me that every major supermarket across the country has the same produce, year-round. You can get off the interstate in any state and you'll have to drive a while to taste a unique, regional taste. Preserving locally-grown and locally-produced foods goes a long way towards preserving regional food cultures. This matters to me.

I know another "locavore" who doesn't care about taste or culture, he just cares about waste and believes that any plot of land should be a vegetable garden to feed people with. If he can't eat from his own garden he works on a community garden to help feed his community. When he's not working on his community garden, he's supporting a local farmer that's using land to grow food instead of tract housing.

There is no rigid ideology or shared overall view other than the fact that all "locavores" tend to believe that our families, bodies, and communities are better off when we're closer to the source of our food, literally and figuratively.

Again, I'm shocked that this ethos meets so much resistance, especially here.

See, none of this is stuff I have a problem with, nor do I think I ever said I had a problem with it, in fact I'm actively promoting it as a good thing.

However, often interspersed with the above ideology is the idea that locavorism is "better for the environment," which seems disingenuous to me, considering it involves a relatively low-impact change of behavior for a small proportion of the population - unless you're talking about sweeping, across-the-board food supply reform - which I'm very, very cautious about for the abovementioned reasons.

Mike G wrote:Nut-covered chocolate cat clusters, in my family.

When we had our beagle, those were his after dinner snacks. Nothing like a litter-encrusted wet nose to great you.

I'm not 100% sure what in my quote leads to the points made

You expressed that previous comments approached insults. And I was suggesting that perhaps conventional farmers deserve a little more credit than they are currently given in urban food discussions. I attribute misconceptions about conventional farmers -- fine if I'm delusional and making this strawman up -- to the great distance that has grown between our food and ourselves. Everyone wants what's good and right. Many have the answer. Not all of those answers (or accusations) are correct.

No deflection has occurred. This string has its fair share of anti-industrial messages and I simply want to understand what's being advocated.

I see absolutely no good use for canned soda. But, switch out the corn syrup for cane sugar and the kids are just as fat and the burn down of the cane is far worse environmentally than corn production. And, we probably can't grow enough cane in Louisiana to meet current demand so we're importing from Brazil and that's not feeling too local to me, not to mention the fossil fuels to get that raw cane from there to here. Though Brazil is about the greatest place in the world, even though the kids they're gonna use to harvest the cane that we're now putting into our soft drinks because we don't like monocrops are being exploited.

As I said, I'm a supporter of locally sourced food and the more fresh fruits and vegetables, the better. Let's just make sure to get broader input on the policy changes.

Mhays wrote:

eatchicago wrote: Frankly, I'm really shocked that here we have a movement that advocates for the consumption of more farm-fresh produce and people seem to have a big problem with that.

On a food forum.

OK, then what is the substantive difference between a locavore and a gourmet? If you say there isn't one, then I'm fine with that - it's that there seems to be some other ideology beyond saying this is better quality food, why don't you try it.

What I have said, often, is that local, eating local, locavorism, whatever you want to call it, is not so much the end, but the means. Yes, there are times when my family is grabbing some product just because it is local, but we do that because we have learned, again and again, that local leads us to what we want in food. If we want food made with care and artisanship, food that tastes better, food that respects the environment and animals, well then local food will get you there 98 times out of 102. On top of that, to the extent I can, I want to support area companies and producers. I like knowing where my food comes from. I like meeting the people. Local leads me there.

I always use the example of La Quercia ham. When we first decided to give it a whirl a few years ago, we had never heard of it. In fact, Fox & Obel who sold it to us, soon stopped marketing it because not enough other people were willing to buy an expensive (but no more) American made prosciutto. Now, of course, Alice Waters serves it and Cooks Illustrated declares it better than anything imported, yada-yada. It's not so much that we were ahead of the curve, it's just that we knew sooner. See, here's the thing. If La Quercia did not exist, we would still buy prosciutto at times. When given the choice though, we went with the local. We aint stitching back.

There's all sortsa things that we want in the Bungalow that we cannot obtain locally: chocolate, coffee, grapefruits, spices, olive oil etc. Of course, we are gonna try to find the products that best meet our strictures. On the other hand, it if the product is available here locally, we are gonna stick to that source. It just has not let us down.

Well, and I find a lot of this criticism is still of the "you haven't solved all the problems immediately so why bother" variety. Means rather than an end is a good way of putting it, one, because it disavows responsibility for solving all the problems. You buy local because you have good experiences-- of taste, of meeting farmers at farmer's markets, of really liking the restaurants that do too (Mado, Vie, etc.) And along the way, you like to think that your yuppie bucks are supporting and helping grow an alternative food system that makes this stuff easier to get for everybody and might be better for farmers, environment, etc. But it's okay if that end is true or just wishful thinking; the means are enough.

I'm hesitant to condemn the agricultural-industrial system because I've read enough history to know the problems it solved; I've said before, only half joking, that we should recognize what an enormous, radical achievement in human history it is to have poor people with an obesity problem. Nevertheless, that it has its downsides seems undeniable and if I can get great tasting stuff and do my little part to help support an alternative to reach success and grow infrastructure in a free market, with my money (and not with what used to be my money until the government decided otherwise), I have a heck of a hard time seeing what anyone can sensibly object to about that.

this whole subject of locovorism seems to be yet another fad in self indulgence.... started by the birkenstoced anarcho-primitivists and now taken up by a subset of commercialists catering to gasbags with a self inflated sense moral superiority.

nevermind that studies have shown that food transport has lesser enviro impact, via cross continentally shipped grass fed meats vs. local grain fed cattle, or that that the seed, fertilizer or packaging for local produce may have come some smokestack belching factory 1500 hundred miles away.... and nevermind the fact that even some of the most minimally processed foodstuffs may have travelled several hundred miles back and forth before being ready for sale, thereby not being truly local.


pre-world war 2, common folk had not much choice but to be locovores. many of them kept small livestock and grew limited amounts of seasonal produce on their tiny plots or yards and bartered with their neighbors for variety. those were true locovores.

today we have built an entire food industry vital to our national economy and vital to the world's ever increasing need for food stuffs.

to those locovores who would shun practicallity, walk the talk, in toto... to the leftover harried masses - run along, nothing to see here.

To the straw men is now added an army of hemp men the size of a battle in Lord of the Rings.

Did you read anything in this thread before stereotyping everyone in it?

I can also think of a video you might watch before assuming that the farmers selling at farmer's markets are routinely using fertilizers, trucking all over creation, etc. It's linked in my sig and it's pretty much the opposite of everything you say.

auxen1 wrote:

I see absolutely no good use for canned soda. But, switch out the corn syrup for cane sugar and the kids are just as fat ...

auxen.

I think what you say above, what eatchicago says about the word locavore, and Mhays' comparison of locavores and gourmets, all make an important point. Language is powerful, but also easily manipulated. As your point illustrates, when a word starts to catch on, all sorts of interests catch on too, and try to get control of it. Some powerful, big-money interests rendered the word organic relatively meaningless by reducing it to some strict, esoteric definition, then finding countless ways to make a profit from that definition without adhering to the movement's ideals.

To get much utility from a word, one has to treat it this way, reducing it's meaning to a narrow, easy-to-understand definition. That's the strawman method used by people who want to tear down the locavore movement, just as it's the method used by the people who want to exploit it. I used to disagree with Michael's (eatchicago's) effort to get away from the word locavore, but this is making me come around to his way of thinking. Unfortunately, the word has the potential to be a helpful marketing tool for his website, but it has the destructive potentials I'm describing here too.

Give me whatever label you want, but my feelings about eating local are not so easily branded. After travels to places like France, Italy, Portugal, and Argentina - I came away with a powerful sense of something missing at home. In each of those places, the people I met had a great sense of passion and pride regarding where they're from. Within the countries, regional differences lead to both friction and intense patriotism, but what stands out most is the sense of pride-in-place. Some of that pride is expressed through things like sports and industry, but very, very much of it comes from the local food. I want to have that feeling at home, and I think food is one of the best means through which to get it.

The above paragraph - if it's even comprehensible - may best describes the reason I try to eat local, but there are other reasons too. Next on my list is probably the desire to minimize animal cruelty. You are correct that commercial farmers are not bad people, and it is certainly possible to farm commercially without treating animals cruelly. But the reality is that the larger and more distant meat producers are from consumers, the more likely it is that animals will be treated in ways people wouldn't tolerate if it happened in their backyard. I want to move meat production closer to everyone's backyard.

I also seek local food because it often tastes better, I think it might be healthier, and perhaps it's better for the environment. I honestly don't think anyone knows for sure about those last two points, but at a minimum, I doubt it's worse for my health or for the environment if I seek local food.

Arguments like the one in this thread invariably lead to reductionist thinking, with everyone doing their best to narrow someone else's point so that they can rebut it. Instead of calling myself a locavore, I'm going to start calling myself a proud, patriotic American. Then we’ll see if those Commies can keep using the same methods to argue against the way I like to eat.

mike, if you're replying to me...

i do not partake in the less itchy benefits of hemp.

and no... it wasn't a tolkien inspired epic-urean call to battle.

what it was... was an expression of an opinion on a 'movement' lessened by full reason.

sure... the taste of 'artisanal' pigs and their plopdroppings recycled to ennable verdant fields of lush produce is commendable... heck i would even say noble, especially after the pleasure of consuming it.

what i'm saying is... short of moving society backwards on whole, locovorism is nothing more than yet another food fad.

Leaving aside the gross stereotyping, which has nothing to do with the reality I see:

Again, how exactly is a system of price supports and big corporations which has existed maybe 50 years the norm, and farmers selling stuff to their neighbors like they've done since the beginning of agriculture a fad?