If you wanna get technical about it, everywhere is local since we’re all inhabitants of the planet. Seeing the writing on the consumer wall, giant corporations have jumped on the “local food” bandwagon with just such a view in mind. But that’s like saying every synthetic material is natural since it all ultimately derives from the earth.

The giant food processors are no dummies. There’s people on payroll just to track trends in sales and advertising. They’ve found “loco” is the new buzz word and they want a piece of that pie. Just as they did with “organic” their promo teams are spinning it, preying on customers who don’t understand the concept of bio-regions, watersheds and community.

If you’re.. uh.. lucky enough to live anywhere near a midwestern Frito-Lay plant (owned by Pepsi) you’ll see ads touting potato chips as local food since the spuds are produced nearby for easy transport to the giant frying machines. Kraft reports their Claussen’s Wisconsin-grown pickles are local for state residents and ConAgra says their Hunt’s tomato brand is local if you live within 150 miles of their Oakdale processing plant. Although most of the tomato crop comes from somewhere else in California (which arguably makes them semi-local) they make no mention of  where all their other farms are.

Even Wal-Mart is showcasing itself as your local store since there’s one in easy reach of a large percentage of Americans these days. So let me get this straight: if I buy something from W-M that was produced in China or Indonesia but because a fraction of my hard-earned dough goes to minimum wage people working the cash register (while the rest goes to their corporate headquarters) I’m supporting my local economy?  Umm… let me get back to you on that one.

When I started saving heirloom seeds in the late 1970s, I amassed a bunch of stuff from Mexico because (I reasoned)  I lived and gardened only a few hours away. Never mind that the seed was from equatorial Yucatan or southern Chihuahua and would barely grow at my 7200 hundred foot elevation that couldn’t provide for the climate & day-length sensitive plants. I figured Mexico is pretty darn close.

Wrong! For example, both Taos Pueblo and Isleta Pueblo in New Mexico grow blue corn.  Taos blue corn grows shorter, sturdier and faster to make a crop in that high elevation. It may grow at Isleta if you plant it there but bringing Isleta valley seeds to the high mountains of Taos is pretty iffy. Besides climate, the soils each of these corns was developed in is different: valley equals  sandy rich clay and mountains equals rocky thin soil. That’s like dropping an urban kid into a rural landscape or a country child into the big city. Sure they’ll live (barring drive-by’s or tractor accidents) but that doesn’t mean they’ll thrive.

Sadly the situation is similar in large organic operations, even here. These days there’s a lot of  organic milk produced in New Mexico and as their organic certifier, I’m proud of what these dairies do and how well they well they do it with plenty of good pasture and good organic hay (grown “locally”. That is, in NM). These dairies don’t bottle their own milk but sell it to bulk buyers. For some reason that makes sense only to financial teams, that New Mexican organic milk  is shipped to the southeastern US instead of putting that milk on grocers’ shelves here. Same brand of milk, same product but each sold outside the area in which it was produced.

So anyway what’s the lesson here? Buying locally means starting close and moving out in concentric circles to find what you want (or better: what you need. Big difference). And don’t forget there’s many levels: raw food grown locally; packaged food grown & processed locally; packaged food processed locally but grown elsewhere; raw & packaged food grown and processed elsewhere but sold by locally-owned markets.  Like they say, you pays your money and you takes your choice.