OK, then BY ALL MEANS please create a supply chain to supply me with delicious heirloom tomatoes that stretches a few thousand miles. I suspect if it were possible places like Whole Foods and the like would already be doing it and selling those tomatoes at $5-$10/lb year round.
But since I can only get them in season, and rarely then, I suspect that there is something to the "local, organic" myth after all.
You never realized it's all about the price point being combined with a story? Someone figured out you can make people pay quite a bit more for higher quality tomatoes if you can claim with some credibility that they are grown locally.
How about the good quality tomatoes grown 1000 miles away, that could be economically shipped to you in a way that is less destructive to the environment than the first option, still taste as good and be cheaper? Not an option, because they don't conform to your arbitrarily chosen standard of being "local".
You are no better than the luddites.
There is nothing about mass production that lowers the quality. What lowers quality is the price point and the demand for the cheapest possible product. Shift it to some better balance between quality and price, and mass production would kill your cute little hobbyist farms in every single benchmark, including sustainability.
At the moment the "ecological"/"locally grown" meme is blocking this development.
> You never realized it's all about the price point being combined with a story?
Given that other people are indicating that THEIR Whole Foods has heirloom tomatoes year round and mine does not, and we're presumably all in the US (if we can go to Whole Foods) then that means I'm right! If Whole Foods could economically ship them to every store in the country, they'd do so! That means that there are some things which simply aren't economical to do at any scale other than local.
I don't have a local fetish where "local" == "better" for everything and in fact, you'll notice that I'm complaining about the lack of heirloom tomatoes, rather than bragging about it.
> You are no better than the luddites.
Way to jump to some conclusions and start in on the ad hominem! Congrats!
> Shift it to some better balance between quality and price, and mass production would kill your cute little hobbyist farms in every single benchmark, including sustainability.
Again, way to go on the attack for what reason exactly? What did stupid little hobby farms ever do to you? Why are you so hostile to the idea that a "luddite" could have a "small business" that they "own" alongside the industrial agriculture that you so desire? They're farming on a scale that'll never put major agribusiness in a bind so what does it matter?
The "local" fanatics might be annoying, but I'll grant them that at least they have a real beef with agribusiness buying up small farms and growing vast monocultures. That's a documented phenomena.
But what threat do small farmers pose for Monsanto? None, as far as I can tell. There's a revolving door between Monsanto and government, no such revolving door exists between any small farms and government.
It's just not physically possible to ship a tomato that's been fully vine ripened for a thousand miles. Once they're fully ripe, they're too fragile to ship an appreciable distance. So, the big producers pick them hard and unripe and ship them. Yes, they'll continue to ripen off the vine, but once they've been cut off from their source of nutrients and water they're not going to get any more. It's the trade off necessary to have produce outside of the local season. (Greenhouses in upstate with grow lights would be a better alternative way to get tomatoes in New York City in January though.)
> Once they're fully ripe, they're too fragile to ship an appreciable distance.
That is a mechanical problem. It can and probably has been solved, except it's likely a bit more expensive than just chucking them into a box. Again, the price point.
Whole foods does have heirloom tomatoes for most of the year where I am... Also this is an extremely nitpicked example. With many things, especially fruit, organic options keep more poorly and are less satisfying. I'd much prefer my industry grown, GMO plums to organic options that aren't as sweet or crisp.
Yes it's a nitpicked example, but it's also valid. There are some things that for various reasons have to be local and I think that's a valid counter-point to the article that argues "local is stupid" in a fairly unqualified fashion.
I'm not saying that local is an unqualified good either, it's clearly qualified. There are some things that local is better at full stop.
But since I can only get them in season, and rarely then, I suspect that there is something to the "local, organic" myth after all.