Silly Little Country

Sign Me Up - the 10,000 Mile Diet.

Actually, I think I'd feel more comfortable with 12,500 miles! But it is at least refreshing to know there actually are academics who make good sense. (I KNOW there are.)

As an academic, I understood productivity differentials between locations more than most local-food activists. It seems to me that [they] simply don't understand that some places are just better than others at growing certain types of food, and that it makes more sense to trade these types of things because transportation is only a tiny fraction of the total energy requirements of various food items.
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... You end up destroying more jobs by buying uncompetitive local food than the number of jobs you create in the process.
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I think the best way to promote development in less advanced economies is to buy from them.
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I tend to believe that prices do tell you something not only about the cost of an item, but its input footprint: energy, fertilizers, everything.

This geographer sounds almost like an economist! What great sense.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 11:45 AM