Let me say this very clearly: Locavores don't eat Lays. I've been saying for a while now that local food involves relationships with the people who grew your food. It involves people who are members of your community, who care about your community (and who aren't under the control of distant executives who DON'T care about your community). And the example I've always given is that buying Tyson chicken at Wal-Mart in Arkansas does NOT equal "buying local." Perhaps the example I should have given was buying Lays potato chips and looking up the location where they were manufactured on the internet from an ID number on the bag.
UPDATE: Want to give Lays your own $.02 about their "local" marketing campaign? Call 1-800-352-4477 (Mon-Fri, 9am-4:30pm Central). Let's flood their phone lines!
How You Know the Lays Aren't Local:
- They have a national advertising budget.
- They source potatoes from at least 27 different states.
- Instead of meeting the farmer, you type an ID code from the chip bag into a website and it spits back the location of the plant.
- They claim to "support farmers in tough times" but for $1.99 spent on a bag of potato chips, the farmer only sees $.07 (according to USDA NASS "Agricultural Prices," May 2005)
- Just one of their many farmers grows potatoes on 800 acres. Can you say 'monoculture'???
- They have a stock ticker symbol on the NYSE.
- Instead of being sold at a farmers market, they are sold at over 40,000 stores.
- They have brand managers to coordinate their brand.
- You can't visit the farm where they are made and chat with the farmer.
- They are manufactured in a plant and delivered in a truck.
What does the creator of the term 'locavore' have to say about this?
"The local foods movement is about an ethic of food that values reviving small scale, ecological, place-based, and relationship-based food systems," Ms. Prentice said. "Large corporations peddling junk food are the exact opposite of what this is about."
Just to give Frito-Lay a hint about what local means, here's a profile of a local food near me. If you go to my local farmers market, you'll see Jackie selling Jackie's Jams. And yes, she's THE Jackie mentioned on the label. They are her recipes.
The jams are now available at our local Whole Foods and in some local restaurants. However, because Jackie uses local, organic fruit in her jams, her company's size is limited by the availability of local, seasonal ripe fruit. And the jams truly are seasonal - while she does a fantastic job responding to demand for her most popular flavors, her products change with the seasons. Just ask me how long I had to wait to get her high-demand guava jam! And if I want to know which farm the fruit in any particular jam came from, Jackie can tell me. I don't have to look it up online. In fact, sometimes she partners with local farms to make special batches of jam with their fruit so they can sell it to their own customers.
Last, Jackie jokes that she's the sort of person who would say "Oh, you like the jam? Here, have a case for free!" She's become an excellent businesswoman but her need to profit never, ever overtakes her desire to produce the highest quality jam. She proudly displays awards her jam has won (her BRB jam - blueberry, raspberry, blackberry - won the 2008 Artisinal Award from The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills in the Sweet Preserves category) and would never sacrifice the quality of her ingredients to make an extra buck. THAT is local. |
