Reference no: EM133616668

Question 

From books to new restaurant menus to farmers' markets, Canadians are getting one message over and over again: eat local, seasonal food. According to proponents of local food - "locavores" as they like to be called - eating local tastes better and supports local small-scale farmers. While both of these results are good, the primary reason to "eat local," we are told, is that our diets would be less damaging for the environment. However, local food does not help the environment at all so we should just reject this pressure to eat locally.

Recently, Pierre Desrochers - a geography professor at the University of Toronto, Mississauga - wrote a paper that argues that if you are trying to save the planet by eating local food you are misguided. He is right. There is a big unsaid problem with supporting local, small-scale farmers who grow, for example, spring mix for salad: local farmers in Ontario are much more inefficient than growing operations in the Salinas Valley in California. The fact that more consumers are eating local spring mix means that they are supporting more farmers farming inefficiently. Thus, local food is worse for the environment. My advice to the locavores is this: save the planet by buying international.