The eat local backlash has officially begun. It had to happen, of course; a movement does not rocket to popularity (locavore was 2007’s “word of the year,” according to the New Oxford American Dictionary folks) without creating a few enemies along the way.
One of those enemies is journalist Joel Stein. The writer was last seen in these pages taking former presidential candidate Tom Tancredo out for a Mexican meal. In the latest issue of Time Magazine, Stein pens a piece titled “Extreme Eating,” in which he fulminates about the antiglobalization bent of the locavore movement and creates a meal based on imported foods:
To prove how wrong the farm-to-table movement is, I cooked a dinner purely of farm-to-airplane food. Nothing I made was grown within 3,000 miles of where I live in Los Angeles. And to completely give the finger to the locavores, I bought the entire meal in the local-food movement’s most treasured supermarket, the one that has huge locally grown signs next to the fruits and vegetables: Whole Foods.
His meal of Spanish Marcona almonds, Chilean sea bass (a formerly problematic fish choice, though it’s still on Seafood Watch’s “avoid” list), Peruvian asparagus, and Hawaiian pineapple washed down with a nice French red may have been un-PC, but it was, he reports, delicious.
Maybe Stein is just trying to put the scales back in balance from the avalanche of press about people living for a year on 100-mile diets. Or maybe his rant is just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m a big fan of Stein’s work, but the last thing in the world he did here was “prove how wrong the farm-to-table movement is.” He proved that one can assemble a meal entirely of imported ingredients, but we kinda knew that all along, didn’t we? Joel gets accused a lot of snarkiness for its own sake, usually an unmerited claim, but this time I think he’s guilty…unless he just flat misses the whole point, which for a journalist is far worse.
The factual proof is indeed lean, but I don’t think Stein’s piece was intended as factual proof. Instead, it’s a much-needed protest against locavore tyranny, and I welcome it on those terms. I eat globally without guilt and I’m glad to hear that someone who reaches a bigger audience than I ever will is willing to speak publicly about doing the same.
I wasn’t that thrilled with his article overall- it feels like a lot of snark for little point- but I think he actually hit the nail on the head with one snarky comment at the very end: “Because it’s the only way we Americans learn about other countries, other than by bombing them”.
I can appreciate a lot of the arguments behind the locavore movement, but lately it’s taken on something of a nativist tone. This idea that only food grown in America can be “trusted”, that somehow America is this oasis of safe and healthy food and that food from overseas is ‘almost guaranteed’ to have melamine in it… I’m sure this isn’t how it was meant to be, but lately I’ve started seeing a lot more of it.
Not to mention that, from a development perspective, this is really a double-edged sword. We spent the last 30-40 years telling (and in some cases, forcing) developing countries to give up growing local crops and turn to cash crops for our markets. Now, a generation later, when their agricultural practices have been completely torn apart, we’re saying “sorry, we don’t want your products anymore, go figure out a new plan”. If we had done this years ago, it might not have been so destructive (and might actually have been beneficial), but now we’ve left millions of farmers in developing nations with cash crops they can’t sell and few ways to return to the way they were.
Maybe I’m just too damned easygoing, but I don’t feel pushed around by any “locavore tyranny.” There is a very good point to be made that eating mostly what’s grown or raised in your own area is in many ways beneficial, both to the eater and to the community of farmers and manufacturers. There are not nearly as many truck farmers and small specialty growers or ranchers now as there were a hundred years ago, but there are many more now than there were twenty years ago, and the “locavore” sensibility, or the food-centric movement that nourished it, is largely to be thanked for that. Walk through a good farmer’s market and tell me it’s all crap. Does this mean I’ll stop buying French or Italian wines, weird foreign condiments, and mail-ordered dry-cured pork products from Tennessee? Or navel oranges from Australia when they go out of season here? Not at all. I’m just happy to have the ability to eat stuff that was picked this week instead of last month, that arrived in the back of a farmer’s truck instead of the cargo hold of a ship or airplane, more often than not.
The complaints about “locavore tyranny” make me think of the way people used to react when they found out I didn’t eat meat (I used to be a vegetarian, but gave it up a few years ago). Some people would immediately become defensive, as though the primary purpose of my decision not to eat meat was to guilt trip them. It was a bizarre form of narcissism: “I’ll eat meat if I want to — don’t try to stop me.” Okaaay. After a while I never mentioned it unless directly asked, because the reactions were so paranoid.
I live in the Bay Area, a hotbed of locavore evangelism, and I can’t remember ever having someone rib me about drinking tea or buying European wine or any of the other non-local foods I regularly eat. Even among people who identify as locavores, all but a tiny, zealous minority will happily agree that it’s not an all-or-nothing thing. I don’t know a single person who has given up coffee or chocolate out of locavore-ish principle. If people are bugging you about eating local to the point that it’s aggravating, hang out with someone else.
As a journalist, I think it’s safe to say Stein’s column was just something he wrote on a day with little inspiration. There is no buy-local tyranny, obviously, and writing about dining on international foods is just filler between the ads. Hey, I bought Korean smoked oysters! Whoop-de-doo!
That said, the buy-local movement seems a little naive to me. It’s a fine idea for those living in warm-winter climates (Point Reyes, anyone?), but silly for those in areas with 100-day growing seasons.
i say buy local is great at the right time of yr and it is the freshest, besides have you tasted chilean fruit (it may be good when picked but by the time my markets get it may as well buy fruit in a can) pretty bland
i buy most things in season (cheaper prices too) and will freeze it for later
A lot of this has to do with farm subsidies which started out with good intentions(like most govt. programs)but is no longer relevant. I look forward to seeing more independant farmers and ranchers as our level of prosperity will open up a better market. There’s too much land in this country not to do so.