Raising the Ire of the Locavores

In last Friday's reading list, I included a piece from the NYTimes by blogger Stephen Budiansky entitled "Math Lessons for Locavores." Apparently his thesis - that we spend/waste more energy at home on food storage & preparation than we do in shipping & trucking our food across the country/world - was not well received. It's lit up sustainable food blogs and discussion boards across the internet.

A few of the highlights (not all of which I've had a chance to read yet) ...

• Letters to the Editor in the NYTimes
• "Food Fight: Do locavores really need math lessons?" from Grist (featuring responses from 10 food & environment experts)
• "Grist v. New York Times: Debating Local Food" from The Atlantic
• "Doing the Math on Local Foods" from San Francisco Chronicle blogger Elanor Starmer
• "About That Math for Locavores ..." from blogger La Vida Locavore
• "Eating Locally, and Other Victimless Crimes - A Reponse to Budiansky's Locavore Math" from Boston blogger eyes wide stomach
• "Driving Locavores Loco - Budiansky v. the Sustainable Foodies" from Food CEO
• "The Myth of the Rabid Locavore" from Huffington Post Food
• There's also a pretty vigorous reader discussion going on at Chowhound.

Blogger Lighthearted Locavore (who has a good summary of the Grist article on her website) makes a good point:

"I love it when The New York Times runs articles about local food economies, farmers and food policy, urban ag and locavore recipes. I get especially excited when the word LOCAVORE is used in a piece and welcome an op-ed that has LOCAVORE in its title even if I violently disagree with its premise. Why? Because the more our country debates our food system, the pros and cons of farmers markets and urban agriculture, impact of food miles, fossil fuel used in agriculture and climate change, the causes of exploding obesity rates, farm subsidies for commodity foods, food justice, local and national food policy and the like, the better it is for not only food advocates and locavores but for all eaters." (emphasis is mine)

Stephen Budiansky, the author of the original piece, has posted a follow-up on his blog offering sources for the figures he quoted.

It should all make for some interesting bedtime reading!