It was even weirder than I remembered. A pack of wild boars wandered from a cattle field to the spinach field, breaking fences along the way and carrying e. coli on their hooves.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/13/MNG71LOT711.DTL

I was using “argument” in the sense of “a statement to support a thesis and persuade others” and not in the sense of fighting. You and your readers do such a good job of not fighting that the second meaning didn’t occur to me till too late.

Can you believe I forgot about cold frames? [hangs head]

I would definitely agree that, sy, in the winter local food that was flash frozen is better than nonlocal “fresh.” Now we get into details again: how does your local grower freeze her food? Flash freezing food does an excellent job of preserving nutrients but I don’t know about other freezing methods, and I understand flash freezing equipment requires an industrial-sized investment. Can anyone enlighten?

When I visit a CSA or see pix/webpage of a Pennsylvania farm that supplies my local farmer’s market, I get the warm fuzzies and some sense of comfort. (More so with the visit than the pix & website, of course.) But I don’t kid myself that this represents a real health inspection.

There’s a point you didn’t make, which I think you should. Locally produced MEAT is almost certainly much, much better than industrially grown meat. Double for non-industrially-slaughtered meat. Ye gods, it could hardly be any worse. The prices make me wince so I can’t always buy it. I’m working my way from rare treats – such as bacon and fancy sausages – and maybe someday I’ll be able to afford lots of chicken (the mainstay of my diet).

Another point to make, again not directly related to yours: what’s in season tends to be both cheapest and freshest. It’s all about supply and demand. What’s in season is what’s plentiful. What’s plentiful is what’s cheap. What’s in season is also what’s tastiest. This is what I tell my spouse when ze wants to buy raspberries in December “They’re too expensive so we know they’ll taste like cardboard.”

He maintains a thick band of trees and shrubs all around the farm to block the drift of any pesticides from neighboring non-organic agriculture, and there aren’t any factory farms or feedlots around.

So I still side with Barbara that local food is for the most part safer, because not only is it easier to trace any contaminants, but I think contaminants are less likely with local farmers as well. One of my college professors called that the “I know your mama” factor as an advatage of local businesses in general.

Kate–evolutionarily speaking, I suspect you are correct that our tastebuds and noses steer us toward fruit and vegetables that are ripest–and thus also more filled with vitamins and minerals. And the fact is–truly ripe and truly fresh plant based foods taste better than those which are old and tired and which may not even be properly ripe anyway.

Harry–I wasn’t making arguments per se–just stating my opinions, which I admit are mostly unsupported. You are correct, however, that my first point is that locally grown fresh food is actually fresh–as opposed to food which has spent two weeks going from the farm to the table. And it is a fact that the longer a plant food sits unpreserved after it is harvested, the more vitamins and minerals it loses. So that, you agree is a relevant point, and to my mind the most relevant point in the entire post. Which is why I stated it first.

I disagree with your point 1A, however. For one thing, you would be amazed as to what can be grown in cold frames even in New England during the winter–a cold frame being essentially a small unheated greenhouse. Carrots and dark leafy green vegetables can all be grown that way–and while there are only a few farmers doing it now, if demand rises, more will start growing in that way. In this way, they could provide better fresh food for New Englanders in the winter.

Also, I disagree–I think that preserved food–frozen, for example–that was grown locally is still going to be higher in nutrients than “fresh” food that has been sitting in transport trucks, warehouses and produce departments for two weeks is. Again, I got statistics on this from Marion Nestle, who doesn’t just state beliefs in her writings, she deals in facts.

In fact, I think that anyone, if their only source of vegetables is the grocery store, is better off buying frozen vegetables than fresh and canned tomatoes than fresh, because these are preserved at the peak of ripeness, right after being harvested.

Your point number two is that it depends. Yes it does. Yes, the spinach case in California had to do with our own food regulations and testing systems not being adequate to the task of providing safe food, but the instance I note about the green onions from Mexico has to do with the fact that other countries do not have to comply with our food safety regulations. Which I think rather sucks.

And yes, contamination could happen with your local CSA guy, too–but tracing the source of the illness outbreak would be much easier than tracing the current tomato crisis has been because the chain from farm to plate is much much shorter. And the number of people affected would be smaller.

I’ll give you that you may think that my points 3 and 4 are irrelevant, but again, I was mostly giving my thoughts on the issue, and if some of them are somewhat peripheral, well, that is what happens on a blog! Not everything a blogger writes has a laser-beam focus.

That said, I don’t mind your critique at all, I just wanted to point out that I disagreed on a few of your points.

These are the points as I perceive them. I rely on Barbara to tell me if I have her points wrong. Further, I infer that Barbara’s talking about produce and not about meat. So I’m addressing only fruits & veggies and not meats.

1. Locally grown food has been harvested more recently, and food harvested more recently is healthier than food harvested longer ago.

2. Locally grown food is grown under safer conditions and is less subject to contamination.

3. People who eat locally grown food tend to eat more produce and more varied produce.

4. You know more about the conditions under which locally grown food is grown.

I don’t think that each of the points is 100% right or directly related to the point of the post. In order, then:

1. Probably and generally yes – and certainly I can’t think of anything that gets *healthier* some time after its harvested. There’s some evidence that the same veggie grown under different conditions (angle of sunlight, length of day, soil conditions, etc.) has a subtly different nutritional profile. A’course, this would have to balanced against the fact the food isn’t as fresh.

1A. This needs to be balanced against what’s available at what time of year. A New Englander in January will have a healthier diet (more varied, greater range of foods and nutrients) if he buys non-local fresh produce than if he eats only what was grown within 50 miles and then preserved.

2. This depends entirely on specifics. Last year’s tainted California spinach, for example. It was grown in the US so adhered to US standards. It was triple-washed before being bagged. The farms it grew on were clean. The problem was that the farms were contaminated by other farms nearby (IIRC the soil was contaminated by run-off from meat farms). This could happen to my local CSA guy as well.

3. Irrelevant to the question of whether *this* tomato or *that* tomato is healthier. (It does seem to be true, though.)

4. Only if you go visit the farm and even then you get only a snapshot and a process review.