Portfolio
Portfolio
Locavorism Picked Apart
Stepping out of the subway at Union Square in central Manhattan, one is confronted by swarms of shoppers reviewing stalls of leafy greens, free-range eggs, and honey at the local farmers’ market that operates three days a week. On the south side of the square, the immense Whole Foods supermarket boasts locally grown produce from the nearby Hudson Valley, and up the street are trendy Midtown restaurants where celebrity chefs attract patrons for farm-to-table fare.
The iconic metropolis—typically associated with steel skyscrapers and yellow cabs—is in this instance overrun by the seemingly incongruous imagery of green plants and fertile soil sweeping over the streets. In New York City, as in much of the urbanized West, gourmands have developed a taste for locavorism: ‘slow’ and natural food, bringing consumers closer to producers in a ‘back-to-basics’ movement.
This current trend covets a culinary moment in history before the prepared food aisle, industrial farming, and synthetic ingredients. The retreat inwards to the local can be seen as a reactionary consumer gesture in the face of global shocks to the food system: emission-intensive transportation of produce in worldwide supply chains, price fluctuations from economic integration, and global warming damaging crop yields through droughts and floods.
Though locavorism is often tied together with other food politics, at its essence, it is pitched as a ‘traditional’ solution to today’s harmful and wasteful agricultural norms. But while proponents suggest a step backward in time might bring our food system into balance, critics instead see this as developmentally anachronistic and largely unfeasible given the ecological and planning constraints of our time.
Locavorism in Numbers
The numbers behind the locavore trend are compelling. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently measured that local food sales in the US have more than doubled in recent years, climbing from $5 billion in 2008 to over $11 billion in 2014. A survey by the National Restaurant Association found that ‘local sourcing’ has grown as a culinary trend for restaurants in the US by 44% over the past decade.
Local sourcing is even outpacing other food movements; the 2014 Cone Communications Food Issues Trend Tracker survey found that 74% of American respondents ranked ‘locally produced’ as very important, compared to 52% for ‘organic’.
Perhaps paradoxically, this consumer trend is distinctively urban. Farmers’ markets in US cities have quadrupled over the past 20 years, and research by ATKearney found that the most willing demographic to pay more for local food is single urban households (95%), followed by affluent families (71%).
Marketplace studies consistently demonstrate that urbanites are more likely to make purchasing decisions based on consumer consciousness—such as ‘sweat-free’ clothing or furniture made with recycled materials. Urbanites are also more frequently confronted with scarcity, waste, inequality, and pollution, making their consumer consciousness a lived experience rather than a theoretical concern.
A Hybridized History
The locavore movement began in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a spin-off of the Slow Food movement, which was established in 1989 as a protest against McDonald’s in Italy. The Slow Food Manifesto advocates for rediscovering local cuisines and historical food culture to counteract the rise of fast food.
However, while locavorism presents itself as a return to a more ‘natural’ way of eating, historians argue that this is a fantasy about a past that never quite existed.
“Locavorism presents itself as a return to a kind of traditional food system where people ate in accordance with their place and time—local and seasonal. But history tells a different story: our food traditions were shaped by scarcity, not abundance.” — Nadia Berenstein, food historian
Historically, humans have actively sought to escape local and seasonal limitations by developing food preservation techniques, migrating for better crops, and colonizing for spices. The idea of a harmonious, ‘pre-industrial’ food system is romanticized nostalgia, ignoring the realities of historical food insecurity.
Urban Food Security & The Greenbelt Fantasy
While the rhetoric of locavorism from a ‘traditional’ standpoint is historically flawed, concerns about urban food security are legitimate. With the global urban population projected to reach nearly 70% by 2050, the demand for food in cities is increasing while available land for farming is decreasing.
The fantasy of greenbelts surrounding cities—where urbanites are supplied by nearby farms—is a modernist relic of the ‘Garden City’ model. In reality, suburban sprawl and dense urban development make such an idea logistically impossible.
The Market for ‘Local’ Food
Despite technological advances, the marketing behind the locavore movement remains rooted in nostalgia. Packaging for ‘local’ food brands still features idyllic farms, rolling fields, and community-driven harvesting, even as urban farms, rooftop greenhouses, and hydroponic systems dominate actual production.
“Local farm branding may not boast illustrations of open fields much longer—in the future, it might feature industrial hydroponic farms in warehouse basements instead.”
Consumers’ psychological association between ‘local’ and ‘natural’ will likely persist, even as urban food production becomes increasingly automated and optimized.
Final Thoughts: Locavorism & The Future
While the locavore movement is marketed as a return to the past, its future is likely a radical departure from traditional agriculture. The romanticized vision of farmers’ markets and countryside greenbelts is being replaced by indoor farms, AI-powered agriculture, and vertical farming.
The question remains: will consumers accept a high-tech version of local food that looks nothing like the pastoral ideal they imagine?
The future of locavorism might be less about returning to nature and more about engineering it.