I have written before about how Facebook has changed the definition of the word “friend”, I think the word “local” has also changed, but somewhat surprisingly not because of the internet.
The article In Florida, Seafood Becomes Less Local, by Damien Cave covers a lot of interesting ground about the Florida fisheries industry. One of the most basic points Cave makes is that when restaurants describe the fish as “local” they just mean that it came from a local fish distributor, while it may have come from half way around the world, and that some people think it’s misleading to call it local.
I think that may have been a valid objection ten or twenty years ago, but with the ability to ship something using a service like FedEx (which is how most fish travels these days), it’s entirely possible that the tilapia that has been flown in from Madagascar is fresher than the Atlantic salmon on the Florida menu. In that sense, it really doesn’t matter how “local” the fish is if your goal is freshness. In many ways the internet has made the word local less meaningful, but in the case of food, transportation has significantly reduced the meaning. Obviously some things, like a cup of coffee and a car wash will always have a local element, but the list of things that don’t matter, or matter less, continues to grow, from banking to movie rental, to food. That’s the reality.
Having said that, as irrelevant as “local” has become in the traditional sense, it is starting to take on more meaning in a different sense. A lot has been written about what some people call “food miles” – that is how many miles the food has traveled to get on your plate, but they are talking about it not because of anything to do with freshness, the focus is on the environmental impact of transporting goods long distances. The carbon footprint of the tilapia, if you will, compared with that of the Atlantic salmon mentioned above.
The assumption is that the fewer “food miles” the food has, the more “local” it is, the better it is for the environment. There are well documented arguments that dismantle the the validity of that point, so I am going to leave that one alone today. I just find it interesting to see such simple words like “friend” and “local” meaning such different things from when I was a little kid. I can’t help but wonder what’s next?
-Ric
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