Criticism
Though there are many reasons to prefer local food (for example freshness), the use of food miles as a strict purchasing metric has been criticized. For example, the carbon footprint of foods depends on much more than the distance travelled, including energy inputs of production. One study found that only 11% of food-related greenhouse gas emissions came from transport (and only 4% from delivery from producer to retailer), whereas 83% of GHG emissions came from food production. Animal products such as meat and dairy foods take considerably more energy to produce, meaning a vegetarian diet has a much lower carbon footprint, regardless of food miles. Fair trade advocates point out that the livelihoods of poor farmers can be greatly improved by giving them a global market which includes distant developed countries.
Further information: Food milesRead more about this topic: Local Food
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“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“A friend of mine spoke of books that are dedicated like this: “To my wife, by whose helpful criticism ...” and so on. He said the dedication should really read: “To my wife. If it had not been for her continual criticism and persistent nagging doubt as to my ability, this book would have appeared in Harper’s instead of The Hardware Age.””
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)