The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet

"If you take the local food movement to its logical extreme...people who live beyond their local food chain are essentially parasites," explains economic geographer Pierre Desrochers, co-author of the book, The Localvore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet.

Using economic and historical data, Desrochers and his co-author Hiroko Shimizu pick apart the latest food activist trend extolling the benefits of eating local. "If everything was so great when most food was sourced locally centuries ago," asks Desrochers, "why did we go through the trouble of developing a globalized food supply chain in the first place?"

Desrochers sat down with ReasonTV's Nick Gillespie to discuss the book, the benefits of factory farming, and the enduring nature of food activism.

About 5:45 minutes.

Cameras by Jim Epstein and Joshua Swain. Edited by Meredith Bragg.
Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to ReasonTV's YouTube Channel to receive automatic updates when new stories go live.

• Category

  News & Politics

[GrassFedMeats]

reason is behind the times when it comes to the impact of petro-fed frankenfood on the human body. I posted a couple comments to try and correct this unfortunate error. even the guest is blissfully ignorant. I'm a libertarian that understands the value adding of local organic. Joel Salatin's industrial organic (lack of a better term) is just recently hitting the libertarian realm of thought. Joel is a libertarian if you didn't already know, so he understands making money. multi-million $ farm

[GrassFedMeats]

also, the assumption that grain should be used is physiologically incorrect. this simple fallacy has led to pathogen aclimization due to increased acidity of the rumen in cows and also a serious deterioration in nutrient profile. The long distances that produce must travel requires picking before ripeness, which prevents the full development of vitamins. I agree that imports can help with environmental shock but current growing methods contribute to crop failures.

[GrassFedMeats]

this is an area where i can't agree with entirely. sure bananas and other exotics will always be imported due to growing requirements, but they fail to consider the value added to local organic by not having pesticides and other toxins present in the food. Joel Salatin has some very good ideas to inject in this arguement. Our modern agricultural model in it's present form is stripping the value from the land through erosion and de-mineralization and aiding in the explosion in health care costs.

[Jhomey17]

No he's not. He's defending the system that allows farmers to sell their surplus crops to regions around the world, it being his choice to do so. And you have a misunderstanding of where robber barons come from. In economics there is such a thing as perfect competition, allowing an unlimited # of competitors into a market. When you add government regulations to the free market, the number of competitors WILL go down, allowing once small businesses to become monopolies. And so the story goes..

[EIH3021]

I am assuming that Nick Gillespie is defending the very companies you just mentioned. He defends the free market which is the cesspool where robber barons emerge from. The local food movement will decay because of robber barons like Gillespie.

[UnboundEndeavors]

Yay, Money and Profit! ];-{)>

[UnboundEndeavors]

C'mon, everybody! It's not either/or, but both/and! Let's all join hands and sing the song from the movie Popeye: "Everything is food, food, food! Everything is fooooood!...."

[UnboundEndeavors]

Just 10,000 miles? Why not more? Hell, I want to find out what the Tribbles from Star Trek tastes like! };-{)>

[admmellish]

I think you mean the gov't subsidy of grains is keeping more UNHEALTHY food in the grocery store. It seems like even at a crappy grocery store I can still get a ton of fruits and veg.

[TheFremenChick]

Romanticism -- BINGO!