Math Lessons for Locavores?!? Here's a tutorial.

Stephen Budiansky writes a op-ed piece in today's New York Times in which he offers Math Lessons for Locavores. The self-styled Liberal Curmudgeon says takes locavores to task for being "self-indulgent — and self-defeating." He says, "The statistics brandished by local-food advocates to support such doctrinaire assertions are always selective, usually misleading and often bogus." And then he proceeds to do the same thing himself. He's even harsher on his blog about the piece, saying that:

The problem is the way the food gurus have turned the whole "locavore" thing into one of those doctrinaire, authoritarian, and joyless religions that all too often make environmentalists their own worst enemies.

Oh, PUH-LEEZE! I'm a flexitarian who is taking stand-up comedy classes. The folks I meet at farmers' markets and sustainability events are full of humor and flexibility, not to mention great food.

But let's look at the sources for his math lessons. Budiansky cites U of M's Center for Sustainable Systems, but their food-system factsheet on the page he links to urges readers to "Eat Locally" and cites a Leopold Center study showing that "increasing Iowa's consumption of regionally grown fresh produce by only 10% would save over 300,000 gallons in transportation fuel a year."

Old, Questionable Source on Use of Food Energy. Budiansky uses a chart which I have seen many times in anti-locavore works. It says that 31.7% of the food energy is used in household storage and preparation. Even if that is true, it's probably higher in my house, since when I buy locally from a farmer, I reduce or eliminate other energy uses in the chart: 6.6% for commercial food service, 6.6% for packaging material, 16.4% for the processing industry, and even 3.7% for food retail, since the market stand doesn't have air conditioning, coolers, freezers, or even electric lights. Many farmers markets don't even have dedicated building or parking lots. Check out the source document for this chart (see appendix B), you'll see that much of the data is at least 15 years old, before the efficiencies Budiansky himself mentions. The researchers make odd assumptions. The household preparation figure is high because it includes all the hot water used in household sinks. (Don't these people use the sinks in their bathrooms?) The packaging figure is low, since it includes only packaging that could be "specifically attributable to food packaging," but not corrugated boxes and plastic wraps.


Locavores also care about the overall productivity of farms. Dr. Tim LaSalle was the keynote speaker at last year's Sustainable Agriculture conference, run by the Carolina Farm Stewardship. Read his report on The Organic Green Revolution to see how organic regenerative farming systems will "sustain and improve the health of our world population, our soil, and our environment."

Eating mostly locally grown, seasonal food that is low on the food chain can lessen your energy use. It also helps support local farms. I want to live in a country full of local farmers, who take care of the land and help supply food to their communities. They also tend to hire local accountants, doctors, and mechanics, helping support non-farm jobs in their communities. As Wendell Berry writes in Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food,

The size of landholdings is likewise a political fact. In any given region there is a farm size that is democratic, and a farm size that is plutocratic or totalitarian. The size of landholdings is likewise a political fact. In any given region there is a farm size that is democratic, and a farm size that is plutocratic or totalitarian.