Response to Op-Ed in New York Times about Local Food

“Math Lessons For Locavores”, (Stephen Budiansky, NYTimes 8/20/10) I believe misses the mark on eating locally.

Using facts and figures, which, frankly, just snow us with unverifiable information, Mr. Budiansky tries to refute the claim that eating locally is beneficial. But, by limiting his observations to only one issue, that of carbon emissions, he conveniently ignores other critical aspects of sustainability. There are many issues at stake for the health of our planet, society and our economy.

Food security could be at the top of the list. When we depend on food shipped long distances, we are vulnerable to forces beyond our control such as weather and natural disasters in far flung places, labor strikes, oil embargoes, oil pricing, food contamination such as the recent egg recall due to a salmonella outbreak in one of the massive egg factories that supplies many parts of the country. Nobody doubts that salmonella can occur on small farms, too, but that event would not jeopardize the availability of such a basic and valuable food staple, nor have the potential to affect as many people with disease.

The short-term supply of food in urban areas is another issue, as evidenced by reports of depletion of supermarket supplies in the DC area during last winter’s severe snowstorms. Reports were that those markets stocked only a 3-day supply of food.

When we choose to eat mostly locally-produced food, we choose to promote food security in our own regions by supporting the local food producers – i.e. the farms. Everyone has seen the bumper stickers “NO FARMS, NO FOOD”. This is not just an empty slogan but an aphorism that has true meaning. Supporting local farms also supports our local economy.
A viable farm provides jobs for local people, spends money in local businesses and helps to keep money flowing in the local economy.

A local farm provides food that is demonstrably more nutritious, possibly because of the way it is grown, and at least that it is harvested in a more mature state than food which has to travel thousands of miles.

My daughter’s college roommate from rural western New York state (a very smart young woman now in the US State Department) observed that the economy of her region is not as volatile as others because it is has always been a farming economy where goods and services are mostly moving locally. Perhaps that region has not seen the highs of a Fairfield County, CT or a Silicon Valley, CA, but may also not have seen the lows of other areas hard hit by the loss of a county’s sole corporate employer.

Producing out-of-season food in oil or gas-heated greenhouses is something I know about. I closed down my oil-heated commercial greenhouse operation after fifteen years, partly because of escalating oil costs and personal anguish over the pollution the oil furnaces were causing. Solar greenhouse technology is now advanced and very successful. Anna Edey of Martha’s Vineyard, MA, for example, publishes her brilliant and practical designs for anyone to use. These designs have been tested and verified by scientists from several institutions and are marketed under the name SOLVIVA.

Mr. Budiansky also fails to discuss the negative affects of industrial, large-scale farming on our soil and water. As a professional soil scientist for 30 years, I can attest to how vital soil is to life on this planet. This is not an over-dramatized statement. However, using chemical fertilizers and pesticides has led to an almost complete breakdown of the soil-food-web in some places. In turn, this breakdown has led to severe soil erosion and the inability of formerly rich, valuable soils to produce quality, nutritious food. It has also led to severe damage to oceans. For example, there is an expanding dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico (recent oil spill notwithstanding) where soil, eroded from the agricultural lands of the Mississippi River watershed, carries nutrients and pollutants into the sea, killing the biological life in those waters.

Wherever industrial agriculture is practiced in the world, we see the breakdown of soil structure, loss of fertility and increased dependence on chemicals, like a drug addiction.

Since the end of World War 2, chemical farming has ruled worldwide, despite the evidence brought forward by numerous agricultural scientists. As a former USDA Agricultural Extension Agent, I saw firsthand how the government persuaded farmers to give up traditional organic farming methods in favor of chemical farming which favors only the corporations that manufacture the products and, temporarily, while the chemicals are still available, the corporate farms. Independent-minded scientists called the warning alarms on this system. Interested readers could look up and read the works of Masanobu Fukuoka, Rudolph Steiner, Sir Albert Howard, J.I. Rodale, and David Holmgren, as a start.

Vandana Shiva told the Soil Association in 2007:

“The future of the world in farming is to produce more food in diversity, locally. And that can’t be done without substituting fossil fuels for renewable energy, including human energy.”

When oil runs out or becomes too expensive, how will industrial farming continue? In a recent NPR report about oil production in Canadian tar sands, which provide most of the oil the US imports, Cenovus Oil Company Vice President, David Goldie, stated that “the era of cheap oil is over”. All the big oil companies acknowledge this. It is no longer a fringe sentiment held by a few prescient academics. Since this is true, why are we not facing up to this impending catastrophe and making plans to meet our human needs in other ways?

Actually some of us are making such plans, locally, at a community wide level. The Transition Town Movement, the organic farming movement, the community gardening movement and the worldwide network of Permaculture practitioners, are facing these issues head on to move our communities towards local food and clean energy production.

It is imperative that we make plans now to transition to organic farming with an emphasis on local resilience and stability.