The Globalization vs Local Food Debate

Locally grown vs globalized production is the hot food issue of the moment. Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail hosted a lengthy online debate between local food advocate Sarah Elton and globalization supporter Pierre Desrochers. I've extracted the core arguments for each side, and added my own analysis.

TIME TO LOCALIZE

• The current global food system is unsustainable, because it:
• uses too much fossil fuel
• erodes soil
• pollutes waterways and oceans with chemical fertilisers, killing ecosystems
• depletes soil (when monocropping is utilised)
• Locally grown food is tastier and more nutritious because it gets from garden to table much quicker.
• A sustainable local food system helps people gain more control over what they eat.
• Food that comes from far away through the industrial farming system is only cheap because we aren't paying for the true cost - the environmental cost - of its production.
• Localized food production provides food security. A globalized food system might be disrupted by war or natural disasters. [The effects of war or natural disasters on a localized food system would also be catastrophic. If a flood wiped out all the gardens in my local area, I'd like to know that I could access food from elsewhere.] 
• Globalized food production by a smaller number of large producers has led to decreased genetic variation, making the whole system more vulnerable to diseases etc.

STAY GLOBALIZED, ADD MORE TECHNOLOGY

• Modern agricultural practices, especially innovations such as no-till agriculture, have gone a long way in addressing the problems historically seen as making large scale agriculture unsustainable.
• Globalized agriculture lets us take advantage of the climates best suited to growing a particular crop, rather than trying to grow everything close to us, where it might not grow so efficiently. For example, why should people in the UK use heated greenhouses to grow tomatoes, when they could import tomatoes grown without the use of greenhouses in southern Spain? [I agree that growing everything locally is not always the best option. Whatever requires the least environmental resources is usually the best option.]
• Local food production can cause greater environmental harm, because it is less efficient. It requires more land, fertiliser and water diversion to grow the same amount of produce compared to growing it in an optimal climate. [This ignores the fact that many people who support growing locally are advocating organic or permaculture gardening systems, which cause much less environmental harm.]
• If local food growing is so great, why did we develop modern agricultural technology in the first place? [Um, maybe because large-scale farming made some people very very rich, so it was in their interests to maintain and spread that way of doing things. I can't believe you resorted to that argument Pierre!]
• Growing food locally is less efficient, resulting in higher prices. How will people on a tight budget cope with that? [Eating food they've grown in their own backyard will be much cheaper than buying food someone else has grown. There should be funding available to help people on low incomes to start their own gardens. We also need more community gardens for people who don't have backyards.] 
• Local low-productivity agriculture can't feed the world. [We've been doing large scale globalized agriculture for quite a while now, and it hasn't stopped the world's poorest from starving to death.] 
• A globalized food system gives consumers more choice, therefore consumer power is greater in a globalized food system than in a localized food system.
• A globalized food system means we can have a varied and nutritious diet year round.
• Having access to multiple sources of food is much more secure than putting all your eggs in one basket by relying on local food production.
• Most of the problems with the current global food systems flow from subsidies and tariffs. If we remove these, then food production will naturally move to the most efficient places. This would make food more affordable while keeping environmental impact to a minimum.

Both Elton and Desrochers recognised that global and local are not mutually exclusive. There is room for both. The issue is whether we should channel our investment in the food industry towards more local food production, or towards better technology and improving environmental practices in the global food industry. This is a huge opportunity for consumers to vote with their dollars. 

I think we need to look beyond where food comes from to the environmental and social impacts of its production when deciding what to buy. For example, it might be better to buy organic apples grown a few hundred kilometres away than apples grown on the outskirts of the city using a herbicide/pesticide/fertiliser-intensive growing technique. Accreditation labels on food packaging such as Fairtrade, Organic or Carbon Neutral make it easier to make the best food-buying decisions.

What do you think? What do you vote for with the money you spend on food?