locally grown

[kandrathe]

What the guy in the article does is just flame a few good people that made idiotic choices.

When I used to work for the RR, there was a few runs from California to NY we called the salad bowl express. I guess BNSF still does this with refer trailers on flat cars. It is all produce that has to get from CA to New England asap. It was a very low carbon way to move the food, and would be cheaper than similar items grown in a hot house locally (and would have a smaller carbon footprint as well). So, no. Local is not always better. In a capitalist market we strive for cheapest price with highest quality, and fulfilling the other things the customer seeks. Another point related to "shipping" things like coffee, cocoa, banana's etc. Ships are huge and hold an awful lot of cargo, so I would imagine that shipping exotic products remains a consistent price throughout the year (unless demand changes). The fuel efficiency of ships is such that the carbon footprint is less than 1/50th that of the equivalent trucking capacity. There is this whole economy of scale issue, that actually reduces "greenness" if done locally whether we are talking about a train, a ship, solar power on every home (as opposed to a few large generating plants), or a 1200 acre field of broccoli in the Salinas valley.