Think locally, but eat globally, writes George Rosen in an op-ed for the Boston Globe. Reader Rafi sent this to me, as an FYI about an “anti-100 mile diet” — But at close read, George’s article is not so much anti-100 mile as pro-fair trade. Pointing out that many farmers in third world countries rely on exporting their products to the US, George writes:

If the goal is to work against the environmental callousness and human exploitation of giant agribusiness, it would make more sense, rather than reducing American demand for foreign products, to redirect our dollars to organizations like the “fair trade” networks in coffee and tea, which encourage sustainable agriculture and a just return to farmers, and to spread the fair-marketing principle to other products we buy abroad.

While I agree with George’s argument that we shouldn’t be so myopic in the way we think about our world and our food, I find troubling George’s way of framing this as an either-or proposition. Local and fair trade movements are not opposed to each other; they work very much in tandem, and pursue many of the same goals. Buying local whenever you can doesn’t mean never enjoying a cup of coffee again — but it does mean opting for a farmers’ market tomato over an artificially-preserved and ripened tomatos from overseas.

In fact, George’s argument becomes almost silly when he argues we in the US should buy Mexican farm products as a way to mitigate the immigration of now-landless Mexican farmers to the US. Such an argument seriously ignores the global scale of the issues going on here. Much of the migration taking place today is due to the US “dumping” of cheap, subsidized corn and other commodity food products into the Mexican market (a practice made legal via NAFTA), which makes the unsubsidized Mexican-grown corn uncompetitive in the market — even when in terms of “true” cost of production, Mexican-grown corn should be cheaper than US corn.

Meaning: If we simply let Mexican farmers compete fairly in their own, local markets, a lot of this migration would end. Our eating locally — and allowing people of other countries to eat locally — is a big part of the solution.

Which is not to say fair trade coffee from Mexico isn’t part of the answer too. But in our hyper-globalized marketplace, and in our fractured local neighborhoods, the value of eating locally cannot be underemphasized.

3 Comments