The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet.

• Author: Shaw, Jane S.
• Position: Book review

* The Locavore's Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet

By Pierre Desrochers, and Hiroko Shimizu

New York: Public Affairs, 2012.

Pp. 288. $26.99 cloth.

One rarely patronizes a gourmet restaurant these days without finding something on the menu such as Snead's Ferry she-crab soup or Johnson County fried green tomatoes (two examples from North Carolina)--foods that are made with local ingredients produced by nearby farmers or caught by fishermen plying nearby waters, often individuals who are personally known to the chef.

Such is the case even though it is possible to get fresh Alaska salmon and even New Zealand lamb almost anywhere in the United States.

There is nothing wrong with searching out fresh local ingredients when they are in season, Pierre Desrochers and Hiroku Shimizu say in their new book, Locavore's Dilemma. Nor is there anything wrong with "hobby" farming. The problem comes when a focus on eating only nearby foods creates a moral imperative against long-distance trade and when that imperative leads to government regulation inhibiting commerce. Their book's subtitle is In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet.

Some readers may have dismissed enthusiasts for "buying local" as romantics who mistakenly interpret current notions about health, the environment, and food security to arrive at the idea of relying on local foods. They are such romantics, indeed, but the push to "eat local" is also seeping into policy. For example, Desrochers and Shimizu report that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has introduced a regulation that gives preference to local farm products in school lunch programs, and a proposed law would spend $200 million to help Americans obtain better access to "fresh, local foods."

Even more worrisome in the long run is the creation of an edifice of misconceptions built on erroneous antimarket environmentalist notions that may have implications for years to come. We may eventually be expected to pay more for local food, agencies may be required to buy local produce, zoning and regulations may be instituted to foster local agriculture, and pressure may build to keep out foreign products. There is a lot of potential danger in the "buying local" movement, in part because it sounds so benign.

Desrochers and Shimizu learned just how strong the "eat local" movement is after they wrote a policy paper for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University that challenges locavores' assumptions. They found themselves caught up in a...