Word of the Day: Locavore

Coined by some hippies, this was chosen as the New Oxford American Dictionary word of the year for 2007. Oddly enough, they didn't post the definition, just the goals of the movement. Guess that's how they get you to buy new dictionaries.

Wikipedia defines "locavore" as someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius such as 50, 100, or 150 miles. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food, with the argument that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Disregarding rules on adverb usage, the next sentence is Local grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since supermarkets that import their food use more fossil fuels and non-renewable resources. But rule #1 in the environmental movement is question the obvious. This NYT article discusses some recent research suggesting the opposite.

The distance that food travels from farm to plate is certainly important, he says, but so is how food is packaged, how it is grown, how it is processed and how it is transported to market.

Consider strawberries. If mass producers of strawberries ship their product to Chicago by truck, the fuel cost of transporting each carton of strawberries is relatively small, since it is tucked into the back along with thousands of others.

But if a farmer sells his strawberries at local farmers’ markets in California, he ferries a much smaller amount by pickup truck to each individual market. Which one is better for the environment?

Mr. Tomich said a strawberry distributor did the math on the back of an envelope and concluded that the Chicago-bound berries used less energy for transport.

Also I've been to farmer's markets where farmers had come in from from out of state, driving several hours each way. Even at the Portland Farmer's Market we spotted some awfully large blueberries that were way too big to be Maine blueberries-- they were more like Jersey blueberries.