The truth about local

I live in a city, Toronto, whose nickname is "Hogtown". Why is that? Because once upon a time, there were a lot of pig slaughterhouses in the city. There aren't many anymore (there's one, downtown, that remains a sort of anti-mascot for gentrification), and that is an undeniably good thing. Slaughterhouses are filthy, they stink to high heaven, and it's no fun listening to the shrieking of the animals.

For all the revived fascination with a "local" economy, you don't hear a lot of people pining for the return of the local abbatoir. We like the idea that we're eating eggs raised on someone's rooftop down the street, and we're happy to tuck into a steak sliced off the ribs of a cow that grazed a few farms over. But the very idea that we would want to return to a time when our cities were filthy with the refuse and exhaust of an urban economy is insane.

An article in the new issue of Foreign Policy magazine absolutely nails it:

Influential food writers, advocates, and celebrity restaurant owners are repeating the mantra that "sustainable food" in the future must be organic, local, and slow. But guess what: Rural Africa already has such a system, and it doesn't work. Few smallholder farmers in Africa use any synthetic chemicals, so their food is de facto organic. High transportation costs force them to purchase and sell almost all of their food locally. And food preparation is painfully slow. The result is nothing to celebrate: average income levels of only $1 a day and a one-in-three chance of being malnourished.

A true local economy is an aesthetic disaster and would make our cities unliveable,  which is why around the world, "local" is actually a synonym for "poor."