Today's potluck dish began with basil picked from our garden, and some decidedly non-local olive oil. After some blending and the addition of some local tomatoes, and non-local wheat noodles, we had a very nice pasta
.Wheat is something we'll have to research. We're not sure where the lowest fossil-fuel pasta can be found, but we'll write when we figure it out. Pasta is one of our favorite foods, so we'll try to see how locally we can source it.
Which brings up an article that a friend pointed us to arguing at great length how "eating locally isn't always the greenest option." The whole article comes across as quibbling over the details. He makes a good point that you have to take into account not only the carbon emissions embodied in transporting the food, but also the emissions in growing, packaging, storing, etc. So, there may be 1 in 10 or 1 in 100 examples where growing something far away may involve less fossil fuels than growing it locally, there doesn't seem much point in spending a lot of energy debating those exceptions. If you want a simple means for making the low-emission decision the vast majority of the time, choosing the local one is a good guideline.
Choosing organic, even if not local, is another good guideline, as you avoid all the additional chemical fertilizers involved.
Another of his quibbles is that Barbara Kingsolver achieved her year of eating locally by moving from food-desert Tuscon to the water and soil-rich Appalachians. While true that this isn't possible for many people, it is a pointless argument against eating local. People who live in Tuscon should 1) try to eat local and reduce their footprint, and 2) feel a bit guilty (or perhaps nervous!) about living in a place that cannot sustain them, and think about moving to a part of the country that can sustain them. Most won't do so, but if a few do, that reduces the strain on that fragile desert environment. Or if the example of leaving Tuscon causes other potential sun-seeking retirees to think about what might happen to their food security if gasoline prices skyrocketed, then that is a good thing. "Hmmm. Maybe a few winters aren't a bad thing if we can eat fresher food and do the right thing for our grandchildren."
McWilliams's protestations that on the whole he supports eating local would be believable if he hadn't titled his article "Eating Local Isn't Always the Best Option." Why not, "Eating Local is Almost Always the Best Option." He chooses to emphasize the negative, to create doubt and a name for himself.
In the end, the article seems to just be a way to create controversy out of a minor observation. It's like criticizing someone who sells his car and takes up biking to work because once in a while when it is raining hard, he takes a taxi, which gets worse gas mileage than the car he used to own. Overall, he is doing the right thing, even if a nitpicker can find a few freak exceptions to his very good rule.
