Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu, a Canadian husband-and-wife team (he’s an economic geographer, she’s a policy analyst) is out to upend the turnip cart. The local food movement is badly misguided, they say. In their new book, they’ve outlined what they call the five essential myths of locavorism: the nurture of social capital, a boost to the local economy, a low environmental impact, safer and more nutritious food, and greater food security, and assembled academic arguments they believe punch those “myths” full of holes. Desrochers told the Toronto Star:
There have been plenty of local food movements in the last century and they never last long. People ultimately vote with their wallets. Local food producers will always have a place, but it may be a niche. They won’t survive by producing more expensive tomatoes.
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