“Open Q” takes place on this blog every Saturday at 8pm. These posts include an ongoing debate or opinion regarding local living, sustainability, food policy, community organization, or similar topics, and will prompt for your input on these issues. Let us know what you think! Discussion is key to understanding the issues our world faces today and the potential alternatives to consider.

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More buzz regarding the ever-popular “local food” movement, what it means for sustainability, and if it is really all that it is cracked up to be. While the environmental benefits are clear on the local level, is this really a system that can yield benefits on a larger scale?

Steve Sexton at Freakonomics publishes an interesting piece accepting the environmental importance of ‘local food,’ but raising doubts about its suitability overall:

But implicit in the argument that local farming is better for the environment than industrial agriculture is an assumption that a “relocalized” food system can be just as efficient as today’s modern farming. That assumption is simply wrong. Today’s high crop yields and low costs reflect gains from specialization and trade, as well as scale and scope economies that would be forsaken under the food system that locavores endorse.

In response, Eliav Biton at The Greenhorn takes issues with a few of Sexton’s points:

[The article] offers a good opportunity to clarify precisely what we in the food movement mean by “local” food. I think we mean much more than food produced around the corner. I think we mean human food grown in sustainable or organic systems, rather than commodities grown in chemically dependent systems. Sexton’s overall framing is that global human population is growing, and agriculture must increase production to avoid mass starvation. His secondary framing is that global climate change is a very real threat, and that agricultural emissions are a significant part of that problem. I think most Greenhorns would agree with those characterizations. However, Greenhorns in particular, and the food movement in general, would frame solutions to those problems very differently.

What do you think? Is re-localizing our food production the answer to the environmental issues we face? Or is it an impossible dream?