Economic Localization?

I found this great website that helps you obtain a better understanding of where our food comes from. With the effort to localize agriculutre in the USA there has been some unsubstantiated rhetoric about "food miles," just because your food travelled more miles does not mean the environmental impact was worse. The inputs into the equation for the environmental impact of food transporation are: miles travlled by the food, efficiency and scale of transportation, the vehicle used for transportation and how many miles you traveled to purchase your food. In large scale agriculture food is shipped in large amounts and the fuel cost of shipping most products is 1% of the price of that product. There are other issues though that are not intrinsic to food miles, such as packaging, political context, the storage of food and the types of products that can be found on the global market.

This article titled "Avoiding the Local Trap" explains scale as a means not an end, and explores the validity of the food localization rhetoric. I support increased performance in our food system, and sometimes localization accomplishes that.

This article from Micheal Shuman highlights localization and is a primer for his book "Going Local."

I wish there was ample research on the "buy local" concept that was not a promotion or an attack and was simply an assessment of when localization increases some type of performance (environmental, social, etc) and in what situations localization has no effect or a negative effect.

This website is a local food advocacy organization and provides "buy local" information and resources, as well as the neccessary rhetoric to decorate their position.

Buying local is not an assurance of doing more for you community or environment, but it is often better then buying a highly packaged product made using toxic chemicals (check out the book "Body Toxic"). Since our economy is so globalized most efforts to localize will be better for society and the environment, but only because of the minimal scale of the effort and the fact that many large companies sell you products that do not have the full cost (negative externalities) of the product included in the price.