The local/organic/sustainable gang has irritated me yet again, not that irritating Your Grumpiness is a difficult thing to do. As if preaching benefits unsubstantiated by data or logic and perpetual Waters worship weren't annoying enough, now they're engaging in revisionist history.

It's pretty clear, at least to me, that reducing carbon footprint has been a big reason why localvores have pushed their agenda on the public at large. But, now that reports are casting doubt on the idea that local eating reduces carbon footprint, localvores such as Marion Nestle of Food Politics are changing their tune. Nestle writes:

I’ve always thought that the real benefits of local food production were in building and preserving communities.  I like having farms within easy access of where I live and I like knowing the people who produce my food.  If local food doesn’t make climate change worse and maybe even helps a bit, that’s just icing on the cake.  Or am I missing something here?

Well, gee, Marion, based on the previously provided links and thousands like them, I'd say you are missing something! Just about everybody else in the hyper-local movement seems to think that food miles and carbon footprint reduction are the cake, not the icing. Or, at least they did until evidence that fewer food miles didn't reduce carbon footprint began to emerge. I suspect that Nestle's piece is just the beginning of a revisionist trend that will emerge as science debunks localvores' unfounded claims.

Setting aside the revisionism for a moment, what Nestle is really saying is that she supports local food production for aesthetic reasons. I have no problem with this because that's exactly why I occasionally go to farmers' markets. I can find a better variety of fresh produce than is available at the supermarket and, if I avoid the Ferry Building, I can do so at lower prices.

What bugs be about many localvores is that they cop a preachy attitude when taking about buying locally, as if they were somehow morally superior because of it. In the process, they make unsubstantiated claims about localvorism instead of being honest about what the movement is — an aesthetic choice.

The Carnegie Mellon study cited by Nestle (full disclosure, I'm a CMU alum) is interesting for several reasons:

1) It arrives at its conclusions without taking into account different methods of trucking used by locally- vs. non-locally raised products. These differences formed that basis for Salon's debunking of the food miles concept. While I think this to be a flaw in the Carnegie Mellon paper's methodology, I find it interesting that it reaches similar conclusions based on different factors. (The study did, however, account for the higher efficiency of oceangoing ships carrying imported foods vs. trucks carrying domestically produced foods.)

2) It includes transportation miles upstream of the farm as well as final delivery (farm-to-retail outlet) and finds a ratio of about 3:1 between upstream and final delivery miles. Although it doesn't say so explicitly, it seems to assume that upstream miles do not vary based on final delivery miles. Therefore, eating locally has no impact on the larger portion of the food mileage, the upstream miles.

3) It factors in GHGs other than carbon dioxide and concludes that production, not transportation, is responsible for the vast majority of GHG emissions caused by foods. This leads to the conclusion that eschewing red meat one day a week would reduce GHG emissions by as much as achieving zero final delivery food miles (obviously, an impossibility).

I applaud Nestle for calling attention to a study that runs counter to the prevailing localvore orthodoxy. The next step is for the local/organic/sustainable movement to issue a collective mea culpa, admit that they were wrong about food miles and carbon footprint, and begin an honest discussion of the benefits of eating locally grown food. Hint: Beyond aesthetics, I think there are some.