Locally grown food has become more popular over the past ten or so years, but is it more beneficial than buying food that is sourced farther away? There are a few outlying problems with only eating locally, is called a locavorism. There are many questions to ask when only eating within a certain radius: Is it healthier? Is it more efficient? Is it better for the environment? Though eating only locally isn’t necessarily bad, there are some issues involving transportation that emerge, arguments that can be opposed.
Many people argue that the transportation of the food is what creates a large carbon footprint, but in reality that only takes up a small percentage. The chart in Source D confirms this fact. The chart describes the total…show more content… Also in Source C, McWilliams inserts the logistics of transport, “To take an extreme example, a shipper sending a truck with 2,000 apples over 2,000 miles would consume the same amount of fuel per apple as a local farmer who takes a pickup 50 miles to sell 50 apples at his stall at the green market.” This quote explains that if it were, and to an extent it would be, proportional, then either way the food would leave the same carbon footprints. To expand, eating locally has to do more with “[food] per gallon” than “food miles,” as described by McWilliams. All in all, it’s the amount of food that is travelling, not the distance that makes a…show more content… The comic strip by Alex Hallatt in Source G describes this in two ways. To start, the penguin states, “...The supermarket is only a mile away!” This exemplifies the idea that it is unrealistic and inefficient to drive to the nearest farmers market, if it’s not close. Continuing, Hallatt illustrates the surroundings of the comic as an igloo and snow. Not much produce or livestock thrive in snow, so even if the penguin wanted to eat from local sources, the area is just too narrow to be able to have a healthy and nutritional diet. It’s like locavores are stating that their favorite foods are pineapples, but they’re only going to eat apples-because that’s what is grown near them (PERIODIC
