Dbq Essay On The Locavore Movement

The locavore movement, a diet where people try to eat locally grown foods when possible, has become increasingly popular over the past decade. It has generally been viewed as an environmentally friendly movement, which contrasts the reality that locally grown foods are actually less environmentally friendly compared to their mass produced counterparts. However, the locavore movement has been able to spur on local economies, keeping money within communities that would have otherwise been spent externally.

The locavore movement helps the local economies by spurring it on and generating growth within the communities. Jennifer Maiser argues that “eating local means more for the local economy” by stating “a dollar spent locally generates twice
A graph in an environmental magazine illustrates the number of greenhouse gas emitted with most of the greenhouse gas emissions coming from production, not transport, as most people would think (Source D). This graph illustrates, contrary to common perception, that most of the greenhouse gases produced are dependent on the how the food was produced, rather than how the food was shipped. Therefore, eating locally would not necessarily save the earth from much greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, James McWilliams argues that “New Zealand lamb is raised on pastures with a small carbon footprint, whereas most English lamb is produced under intensive factory-like conditions with a big carbon footprint” (Source C). McWilliams’s statement illustrates how buying local foods can be harmful to the environment. He argues that if a British person were to buy a locally raised lamb that it would emit more carbon emissions than a New Zealand raised lamb that was transported to the United Kingdom, due the large difference in carbon emissions from variants in production methods. Locally grown foods, contrary to general belief, are not necessarily more environmentally friendly than mass produced foods in supermarkets. This is illustrated by the fact that foods create more greenhouse gases in production than in transportation.

This boom of the locavore movement over the past