Eating “Local Food” is an appealing ideal in theory, but it runs into several “reality issues.”  As much as people might want locally produced food, there are practical issues of land availability, land costs, grower economics, water availability, and climate which sharply restrict the range of foods that could ever be practically grown as local crops, particularly when you look at how the US population is distributed.

When you go to your local farmer’s market and see a wide range of offerings it is tempting to think that local production could be a significant contribution to our diet.  When you look at what is actually  involved in growing the food supply, a different story emerges.  I spent some time gathering crop acreage data from the extremely useful USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) and the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) web sites.  If you haven’t even looked at these sites and you are interested in agricultural issues you should definitely check them out.

Read more of this story »