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Farmer/grad student makes his argument
By Lisa Abraham
Beacon Journal food writer
Published on Wednesday, Jul 23, 2008
If you've been paying attention to food trends, you know that over the past several years, there has been a concerted effort pushing us toward eating foods grown or raised within 100 miles of our homes.
In the Akron area, perhaps the biggest proponent of the eating local movement is the Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy, the nonprofit think tank that lobbies for local farmers and farmland.
For the past several years, the conservancy has asked visitors to its farmers markets to consider taking the ''eat local challenge,'' agreeing to spend at least 10 percent of their food budgets on local products.
Energy conservation has been a chief argument. With food traveling an average of 1,500 miles before it reaches our plates, the theory goes that eating locally will reduce the amount of fossil fuel expended to get us our food, will reduce pollution and is a sounder environmental practice, particularly at a time when fuel costs are soaring.
There have been arguments to the contrary, that economies of scale offset any real energy savings. Some of those have been sponsored by corporate food producers or groups that otherwise have a vested interest in our not eating locally.
But now such an argument has risen up from within the eat-local camp.
Matt Mariola is a doctoral student in the rural sociology program at Ohio State University's Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster. He's also a small farmer in Wayne County who sells his produce at farmers markets and is a big proponent of local eating.
If Mariola's name seems familiar, it could be because his brother, Mike Mariola, has been featured on these pages. Mike Mariola is owner and chef at South Market Bistro in Wooster, a restaurant committed to buying and serving local foods.
So Matt Mariola, 31, seems to be the unlikeliest person to be making an argument against the movement.
When I chatted with Mariola, he said that his recent study, published in the journal Agricultural and Human Values, began as a class assignment on energy use. He chose to study it within food systems, and focused on the eating-local effort.
His study showed there is a lot of truth to the economies-of-scale argument. For example, a tractor-trailer filled with thousands of tomatoes from California may travel 2,000 miles to get to Ohio grocery stores, burning up gallons of diesel fuel along the way.
But when compared with the cost of dozens of farmers driving their own pickup trucks to local markets, the difference in the amount of energy spent isn't dramatic. When you factor in the fuel expended by dozens of local shoppers using their cars to drive to markets to buy produce, the savings is essentially nonexistent.
In fact, Mariola contends that buying from farmers may even be more expensive from an energy standpoint. It's generally more fuel-efficient to travel to one grocery store to purchase all items than to travel to various locations for individual items, particularly since farms often are many miles away from city dwellers.
But don't think Mariola is becoming the new poster child for corporate farming and mass-produced food. Just the opposite.
Despite the lack of proof of environmental benefits, Mariola is as committed as ever to the local-foods movement.
First, he believes there are economic benefits to putting money directly into the hands of local farmers. The farmer's cut gets smaller and smaller the farther his food travels, so buying from local farmers strengthens the local economy.
Second, there are quality benefits. Mariola's farm isn't certified organic, but he uses no synthetic pesticides and believes he grows produce for his customers that is truly farm fresh — not picked weeks ahead of time and allowed to ripen in a warehouse.
But to Mariola, the biggest benefit from eating local is the one that appeals to him as a sociologist.
''When you do buy directly from a farm, you are establishing relationships and you are establishing a certain amount of trust with a person, with their local foods and with their practices. . . . One of the single most important messages that sociology has to give to the world is that these social relationships that we're all aware of are really important. . . . They are crucial for the well-being of a society,'' he said.
''That's what I think the real value of local food is. You are strengthening those interconnections between real people.''
Until next week, the local- food argument is worth mulling over, along with some local food.
Lisa A. Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or labraham@thebeaconjournal.com.
If you've been paying attention to food trends, you know that over the past several years, there has been a concerted effort pushing us toward eating foods grown or raised within 100 miles of our homes.
Get the full article here.
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