How Local Is Local?
Speaking of local food: How do you know your "local" food is really local? If you grow it yourself, you know. If you buy it from a farmer, you know. If you buy it through a CSA or at a farmers' market, you can feel pretty confident, I guess. If you buy it at a grocery, you maybe can't be so confident. And when you buy it at a restaurant — say someone says the asparagus or beef in their stir-fry is local — how do you know? Eventually, you have to trust someone, but as the chain gets longer and longer, the web of trust extending from your mouth to the land — that local dirt — gets more and more tenuous. If Frito-Lay buys potatoes from someone 300 miles from their factory, then ships their potato chips another 300 miles to you, is that local?
In my opinion, this is the organic problem all over again. The "USDA Organic" definition has already been causing backlash for a while, and it's still going on. It's probably resulted in more use of terms like "biodynamic," and maybe to a lesser extent in the interest in truly local food, and in the web of trust it implies.
Suggestions, O Gentle Readers? Whom do you trust, and how do you do it? Are we reduced to that supposed quotation from Stalin: "Trust, and verify"?



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