Another local vs. industrial post

Here's another rehash of the same tired argument between locally-produced food and industrial food (but with a Chicago spin). Among the few passages of note is the quote from Pierre Desrochers that local food systems risk putting all their eggs in one basket. This is a silly argument, because a local food system is by definition diverse and robust. It could indeed be argued the the more fragile, brittle system is an industrial food system involving long transport distances and lots of infrastructure that can have problems at any moment. In addition, as the recent contaminated egg scare shows, a food system based on a few huge producers with wide distribution reach risks amplifying local problems into national ones.

I'm also intrigued by the insistence in this and other discussions of the environmental impacts of different food systems that we are so fixated on carbon footprint. Obviously this is important, but arguably the biggest impacts of farming are more local. Industrial agriculture destroys more topsoil, contaminates more water, creates more antibiotic resistance, pollutes the air more, and generally is an environmental disaster when compared to most smaller, less-industrial modes of food production.