…and difficult to answer directly.
Well, I originally had a long discussion prepared to talk about some questions that are of course bound to arise when looking at local food in Western developed countries nowadays. For one, I’ve found tha restaurants need a fair bit of problematizing (they rely on the standardization of food, to some extent, no matter how “local” they try to be). And then they very idea of “eating local”…is it not a luxury to even be able to spend time thinking about where your food comes from (unless you are thinking about your own farm work?)
In the end, the graffiti on the gate to the Princess Urban Garden in Berlin (in Kreuzberg, a mainly Turkish neighborhood) might sum up many of the feelings I’ve been having about these questions…
(it does seem to be a very nice, working, and community-based urban vegetable garden, though, so I salute them)
Basically, like everything, it’s complicated. Good things can have negative sides, too, and I think the best answer is just to say that nothing with any ties to social life will ever really be straightforward. I also think that there are a lot of policy decisons that could be made to make “local” (or organic or healthy or whatever else you want) less elitist and just the norm.
