“Eat Local” has become the mantra of a new generation of food activists. Implicit in the locavore agenda is the belief that it combines healthy eating and a high standard of environmental stewardship while delivering important economic benefits and increasing food security within local economies.
In a newly published book titled The Locavore’s Dilemma, geographer Pierre Desrochers and his wife, Hiroko Shimizu, offer the first book to seriously question the locavore perspective. Desrochers concludes that “eating local” would only deliver increased social and economic misery, environmental degradation, greater food insecurity, and poorer nutrition.
Gary Blumenthal, president of World Perspectives, Inc., a firm specializing in international agricultural commodities marketing, and supply, will provide a critical discussion of Desrochers and Shimizu’s challenging assessment of the environmental costs of “eating local.”
