I wasn't impressed with the article but maybe the study it references is better. One thing missing from the article was taste. Tomatoes from the farmers market are immeasurably better tasting than supermarket tomatoes any time of the year. I recently read "How to Pick a Peach" and it made me sad to even look at peaches at my supermarket. Our local peaches were better than 90% destroyed by both a ferocious ice storm in January and then a late extremely hard frost in March. No apples, peaches, grapes, strawberries, etc. Much of Missouri's produce was destroyed. Corn and tomatoes obviously were not affected. No fresh peaches for me this year! The ones I picked up at the local grocer had absolutely no aroma, no smell at all. Mmmmm, yummy.
Supermarkets however provide a needed service and getting produce year round is more than just nice so eating locally exclusively is not really a practical solution today. Personally I prefer the idea of labeling food as per its "total carbon footprint" rather than its "food miles" but were it not for the food miles concept the total carbon footprint idea wouldn't exist. Does this author recommend enacting legislation world-wide to force companies to make this information available to consumers? If not it's just ammunition for reactionaries and curmudgeons to aim at those who use food miles to attempt to mitigate some of the damages of a modern lifestyle. Hardly something worth cheering.
John Thornton