Buy from the Local Global Village!

J

Joe Dressner

Joe Dressner
That's right, buy from authentic farmers from anywhere in the Global Village!

I'm sick of all this buy local stuff. This is pure marketing for local chambers of commerce. Reducing everything to it being "local" is both nonsensical and finally jingoistic. This is a country with a long history of Buy America First, anti-immigrant riots, racism and xenophobia. To now watch seemingly responsible journalists, restaurateurs and wine folks argue to buy "locally" as if they discovered the secret to eternal life is beginning to make me sick.

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Europe has centuries of agricultural tradition and diversity that predated modern transport. It I take a car ride three hours north, south, east or west of my home in historic Poil Rouge, I land into a whole other world of cuisine and wine. Why? Not because of local farmers with PhD's who have set-up boutique operations, but because those separate cultures have a history beyond the phrase "carbon footprint." Those traditions have been there for centuries and are still struggling to exist despite standardization. But look hard enough and you can find them easily enough.

Local does not mean good. Local does not mean authentic. Local does not mean artisan. Local is a quantitative, not qualitative judgement. Thank goodness, my choices in cheese are not limited to what is made locally, let alone wine, produce, fish and meat. If it is good and local and the locals are accessible and need support than I am happy to support them. The important thing for me is what the quality of their work is, not where they are located.

I've had enough of this nonsense. Simpleminded calls for local goods and low carbon footprint miss the point, the more important thing is what is the local quality in each area. Of course, no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
 
I only drink wine from Montmartre and eat honey made on the roof of the Opera house. These two keep me sustained when walking the boulevards and byways of the metropole.

Sad that you have not seen the light.
 
I refuse to respond to this obvious troll. Oh, shit! I just did. [insert emoticon for mortification here]

Glub,
Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by MLipton:
YHBTI refuse to respond to this obvious troll. Oh, shit! I just did. [insert emoticon for mortification here]

Glub,
Mark Lipton
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Joe D, a troll? Wait till Billy Goat Gruff finds out!
 
The logic behind the demand to buy local is not because local production already does constitute a culture but because it only ever will if there is a base of support among the people in the community. You can go be a parasite on other people's cultures (as a professor of British lit., I have nothing against this), but if you want your own locality to have a culture, you have to support it. I don't know that I think that the best thing that can be done with Metropolitan DC is to grow tomatoes, and I don't know that buying local is inevitably right. But the situation isn't as simple as Joe makes out.
 
I love the pork and bacon local production in North Carolina.

Must I only eat it in North Carolina because I should only be buying New York/New Jersey local products when I'm in New York City? How else will New York pig farmers be encouraged?

North Carolina pork is one of the few instances in America where there is a local food culture that dates back decades, if not a couple of centuries.

But, what's the carbon footprint of bringing that product to New York City? Do I hurt local pigs when I eat foreign pigs in New York?

We had some local pork products from North Carolina at our national tasting last week. Our distributor, the noble Ken Rosati, brought it with him on his airplane trip up to New York.

While this has a high carbon footprint, Ken was going to come here anyhow by airplane. So, bringing the local North Carolina pork did not change the carbon footprint for the better or the worst because Ken had already stepped into the airline's footprint. Of course, Ken could have reduced his personal carbon footprint by walking, cycling, driving or being trucked to Manhattan from Durham.

So, perhaps under these unusual circumstances, it was ok to eat the North Carolina pig in Manhattan. At least I hope so.
 
I don't think what Mr. Loesberg writes is at odds with Mr. Dressner's commentary. Not all communities can grow tomatoes, but if you live in a community that does grow tomatoes and grows them well, it makes sense to support them at least enough so that they can survive. [EDIT: And then, of course, people in communities that don't grow good tomatoes can buy them.] There is, however, a platitude-based cry to buy all things local whether it makes sense or not. ("Buy local Michigan pineapples! Delish!") And that probably is, as pointed out in the initial post, pretty stupid. So I don't see any tension or over-simplification. But then, I'm in my office, which means my brain is almost certainly not fully functional at the moment.
 
You're right, I forgot about the carbon footprint argument. No, I don't think you should pay any attention to that. Food has to be moved around the world or there will be starvation. Compared to the mass movement of world trade, your pig from NC is too trivial to matter.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
You're right, I forgot about the carbon footprint argument. No, I don't think you should pay any attention to that. Food has to be moved around the world or there will be starvation. Compared to the mass movement of world trade, your pig from NC is too trivial to matter.
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Thank you Professor!
 
originally posted by Joe Dressner:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
You're right, I forgot about the carbon footprint argument. No, I don't think you should pay any attention to that. Food has to be moved around the world or there will be starvation. Compared to the mass movement of world trade, your pig from NC is too trivial to matter.
Click to expand...

Thank you Professor!
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You're more than welcome, though I doubt my opinion will get you out of dutch with people who use the words "carbon footprint" more than say once a month.
 
Fine rant, but for me buying local is mainly important for fruits and vegetables. Even then it is a necessary but not sufficient requirement for the quality I seek.

Other less perishable goods are a different story.

For example, I remember the clerk at a car rental agency once encouraged my friend and I to support American cars and we gave her dumbfounded looks. As if we should support their shoddy gas-guzzling products just because they were 'American'.
 
North Carolina pork is one of the few instances in America where there is a local food culture that dates back decades, if not a couple of centuries.
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Pfft. Come to Hawaii, where we've been slow-roasting pork in the ground for a thousand years.
 
Too bad Mohandas Ghandi is no longer with us. If he were, no doubt he would post on this board, and I would love to see a Dressner-Ghandi smackdown on this burning issue.
 
i find it all too easy coming up with other countries that have "Buy [insert country name here] First, anti-immigrant riots, racism, and xenophobia", as part of their jingoistic national psyche, to beat myself up for being american. and our history is only 232 years old, whereas these other countries have been at this sort of stuff much longer.

i do walk to work, and the tomatoes grown in my hometown are as good as any anywhere in the world, which are the tomatoes i chose to buy and eat. ditto for sweet corn, etc.

[gulp], but i drink 'les heretiques' and 'mas de chimeres'.

but still, i must say, "right on, joe! let it be told!! get it off your chest!!!"

p.s. no one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the rest of the human race either.
 
Local does not mean good. Local does not mean authentic. Local does not mean artisan.

Joe, I completely believe in these sentiments. I was the other guy that originally got a little pissed on that other blog. But good grief, man, enough with this harangue. Some people are just idiots.

Ever tried Smithfield Ham? That's VA big guy.
 
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