Is Food Still ‘Local’ if it’s Grown by a Nationwide Brand?

If you live in Florida, is a Tropicana orange ‘locally grown’? That’s what Environmental Economics is wondering after a recent USA Today article questioned what the term ‘local food’ really means. While retailers have been quick to jump on the consumer desire for food grown closer to home, some of them seem to be stretching the boundaries of what’s really considered local, like – surprise – Wal-Mart.

From USA Today:

• Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest retailer, considers anything local if it’s grown in the same state as it’s sold, even if that’s a state as big as Texas and the food comes from a farm half the size of Manhattan, as in the case of the 7,000-acre Ham Produce in North Carolina.

• Whole Foods, the biggest retailer of natural and organic foods, considers local to be anything produced within seven hours of one of its stores. The retailer says most local producers are within 200 miles of a store.

• Seattle’s PCC Natural Markets considers local to be anything from Washington, Oregon and southern British Columbia.

Jim Prevor, editor of Produce Business and author of the blog Perishable Pundit, disputes Wal-Mart’s characterization of citrus grown in Florida but sold nationwide as a local product, saying that counting a product that is nationally shipped as local doesn’t seem to fit the meaning of ‘locally grown’.

It’s definitely a good thing to be on the lookout for greenwashing, but being on high alert all the time can perhaps lead us into a sticky quagmire of questions with no real answer. Many people equate ‘local’ with ‘small business’, and would simply rather give their business to the little guy instead of the huge corporation, while others would accept those large companies as local brands.

But, people often don’t consider the fact that some varieties of food simply don’t grow well in their area, and farms looking to take advantage of the local food movement could use environmentally unsound practices in an attempt to, say, grow bananas in Arkansas (and then market said bananas to Arkansans as local). So, in some cases, unless you’re willing to give up food that doesn’t grow well in your area (which, of course, would be the greenest choice), it can make less of an impact to import food from its native region. The mind spins. What’s your take?

Link [USA Today] via [Environmental Economics]
Photo credit: Flickr user jonny.hunter

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