by Michael Skinner

Created on: July 27, 2009

Imagine buying pineapples from Hawaii. Those pineapples took a nice, leisurely south sea cruise, and then rode in air condition comfort in a nice roomy truck. They probably spent some time in large smelly warehouses here and there. And finally they were bought by various wholesalers and retailers and showed in your supermarket.

Every step in the journey took fuel. Any thing used to heat or cool the fruit took energy. Some fruits are artificially ripened. Others are artificially kept immature so that they can travel better. This can require the application of chemicals and the use of even more energy. It is unlikely that all of this "special treatment" makes the food taste better and it is even more unlikely that the chemicals used are good for you.

Compare that with going down to your farmer's market to get some locally grown tomatoes. The tomatoes will not be a strange mutant variety that tastes horrible but travels well. It is likely that the farmer drove those tomatoes fewer than 50 miles to reach you. That has almost got to be cheaper than anything done to move food across thousands of miles. If you buy only what is in season then there will be no Dr Frankenstein chemicals sprayed on the foods to keep them in suspended animation or to force them to ripen on queue. If you get organic fruit and vegetables then they may have a few more spots on them but there will be less in the way of pesticides and fertilizers in them. There is no minimum daily requirement for environmental poisons so I don't think you will miss that particular chemical stew.

Since the local food was left in a perishable state at every step in it's growth and transport, less fudging around with chemicals, hormones and fertilizers in the field needed to be done. This means less toxic runoff into rivers, lakes, streams, the water table, aquifers, wells, and the ocean. Sooner or later you are going to need to drink some of that water so keeping it clean is a nice idea.

The vehicles that transported the long distance food to you used fuel that pollutes the environment at every point from the place the food is grown to you.

The economic impact of eating locally grown food can be somewhat controversial. You are helping local farmers and keeping those dollars in the country. This is true. But when you were buying apples, grapes, and tomatoes from foreign lands you were boosting their local economy and maybe keeping some poor farmers or farm workers afloat. If it was a big agribusiness combine that produced the food then so what. They will find some other way to make big bucks-they always do. But if it was small farmers in Honduras, what will they do when they can no longer sell to us? Although there is a clear economic and perhaps political benefit to us to control our own food supply, if the result is that poor farmers and farm workers in Africa or South America have even less money to live on the social and political consequences of the increased poverty could make for a less stable world. Also, is it a good and moral act to behave in a way that supposedly helps the environment but hurts people? Some radical environmentalists act as if humans were a virus and a scourge of the earth. It's funny how they never refer to themselves in this way and how cavalier they are about the impacts of their economic decisions on the west and the third world.

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