Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly

A 50 percent reduction in meat consumption would compensate for 2937.5 miles driven every year by every family.

Rendering beef from animals confined in feedlots, however, takes this expenditure to a new level, requiring 33 calories of fossil fuel for every calorie of meat

Regrettably, McDonald’s decision not to buy new potato varieties (GM and non-GM alike) has led producers to withdraw Bt varieties from their inventories.

an aquaculture operation that works according to ecological principles can produce a great deal of edible biomass in a small space with little labor.

Studies of rice have found that organic production in California yields 50 to 70 percent of conventional production, while organic corn yields are two thirds of conventional. Organic tomatoes demand six to ten times the land required for conventional tomatoes and use twice the energy to produce. When the Rodale Institute, an organization explicitly

sustainability

reduction. They are greater-capacity vehicles, out-of-hours deliveries, engine specifications, vehicle telematics (better route planning), transport collaboration (industrial carpooling), and logistics systems redesign.

sanctioned program of trade would systematically underscore the power of the hub-and-spoke logic, rewarding producers who locate their operations in areas where the environmental conditions are most appropriate

to the fetish of localism. Third I’ll elaborate on how the unintended consequences of perpetuating an “eat local” brand—consequences that can be cynically populist, isolationist, and protectionist—have hollowed out the movement’s core and exposed the brand to the most dangerous kind of corporate exploitation. Finally, I’ll sketch out another model