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Saylor Runyon

AP Lang

Mrs. Tatum 2nd

16 December 2019

Synthesis Essay

Organizing a locavore movement in a community does not positively impact the

environments to the extent in which citizens believe. Energy factor of food production negatively

impact the environment almost triple as much as the transportation of food does. Citizens that

support the locavore movement “overlook other energy-hogging factors in food production”

(Source C). If citizens of a community want to preserve their surrounding environment, a

locavore movement should not be their solution.

Locavores are people that decide to eat locally grown food rather than store bought food,

to preserve their environment. This decision does quite the opposite. In addition, locavores

believe that transporting food to our local grocery stores is responsible for a large portion of our

carbon footprint. That is extremely inaccurate since “transportation only accounts for 11% of

food’s carbon footprint” (Source C). So, other factors including processing methods of food, use

a significantly larger amount of energy than transporting food does. Also, locavores do not

realize the danger of eating locally because of the lack of information that those consumers have

obtained. Consumers that believe in eating locally produced food are not aware of the water

availability or the extremely harmful fertilizers that the grown food carries (Source C). So, those
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citizens who believe that the switch to locally grown food is extremely nutritional, are being put

at a greater risk of health issues than if they would purchase produce from grocery stores. The

citizens who believe that a locavore movement is the correct answer, have not read on the

negative aspects to this lifestyle, and only apply the positive reasons to their decision.

Production of fruits and vegetables uses over double the amount of greenhouse gas

emissions used through transportation (Source D). The abundant amount of energy that is used to

produce these foods impact the climate in an extremely dissenting way. Furthermore, the

production of fruits and vegetables uses a substantially larger amount of greenhouse gas and

negatively impacts the climate on a much higher scale than simply transporting the food does.

Finally, a locavore movement being implemented in a community can be an extremely uneasy

change for many citizens. For citizens to eat “locally” has a different meaning for everyone.

Some may have to travel unreasonable distances to obtain the locally grown fruits and

vegetables. A locavore movement would be a “poor fit in modernized urban societies” (Source

F). Due to the different boundaries in each state, it is very unlikely that access to a local farmer’s

market will be granted.

To organize a locavore movement into a community would harm the health of the

citizens and would be an extremely hard adjustment, especially in urbanized areas. The negative

outcomes greatly outweigh the positives, and citizens would even harm the environment by

making this switch. To correctly preserve the environment, an alternate solution must be

implemented, concluding that a locavore moment is not the correct or efficient answer.