The Northeast is not, I think, the mega-importer of foods you seem to think it is. And again I'm not talking about transport-optimal foods like grains, I'm talking about fresh produce which spoils quick, weighs a lot per calorie, and is a pain to ship. You can't exactly dump a hundred thousand tomatoes into a big bin on the back of a train. I'm talking abut making hydroponic hothouses easier to setup so you can grow tomatoes in Maine in January, and encouraging GMO's of crops more adapted for local environments and more productive then natural versions. And about taking very mild, very mild steps to encourage people to favor more locally available foods, an apple over an orange in Massachusetts, etc. I'm not suggesting we start trying to grow millions of bushels of grain in New York, partially because we already do so. It would make more sense to use that land for other less transport friendly foods.

The Luddite wing of agriculture are, to me, essentially a group of people who should be flogged, under the assumption that might end the 'feel good' aspect of things for them. As I said, I'm talking about re-examining our agricultural subsidy formulas to place less emphasis on churning out millions of bushels of corn in Kansas in favor of millions of tomatoes and heads of lettuce near NYC in January. We need to remember that this is not a straight capitalism issue, we already tinker with the agriculture market extensively. Absent those subsides the dynamics change, there's a lot of arable land closer to the metropolitan areas which would suddenly become economically viable for food production and there's a lot of crops and agricultural methods which would become viable if we weren't subsidizing certain staples right now, or equally subsidized those.

Well organic farming is not too far short of aiding and abetting mass murder in my book, as opposed to organic gardening which is essentially a hobby and challenge. Anyway, any given region of Texas is quite capable of feeding itself its just cheaper to import the food. You can grow food on a big dead piece of desert quite easily, it will just cost you more than doing it a place that has ample rain so there's no point as long as there are places with ample rain not growing food. And again, like I've said, a lot of these 'grow local, eat local' sorts are over the top, it doesn't invalidate sensible application of the concepts. There's a big difference between offering low interest loans to invest in things like like capillary mats or funding GMO research and simply dumping money into green dreams.

Depends on who you assume he is criticizing.