There simply isn't enough farm land to grow enough fresh fruits and vegetables in the north east to keep everyone fed and there are not enough people in the Midwest to eat all that they can grow. People have grown used to being able to get a large variety of fresh fruits all year long and to be honest I really am not that eager to give it up.
If people want to do that is all well and good but I haven't seen real evidence that it is little more than a feel good bandaid. Nothing wrong with those as long as they are not offered as large scale solutions and they do nothing to address the problem the article is focusing on which is providing low cost that is readily available to large numbers of people.
We buy some organic food and we do buy local food when it is available and the price is reasonable but I am hardly poor and I have a wife doesn't work and can spend hours on food preparation if she chooses, and sometime she does but there 6.5 million people living in the greater DFW are and I would not want to try and supply most of the food for that many people just on what can be grown locally.
He is over the top in his rhetoric but I still don't see where he is wrong in his basic analysis. He is n way more over the top then what we see on a regular basis from the people he is criticizing.