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James McWilliams is a recovering locavore — and a contrary one at that.Locavores believe buying locally grown food supports the local economy and is environmentally friendly because it travels short distances. He is a contributing writer for the Texas Observer and a history professor at Texas State University-San Marcos. In his book Just Food (Little, Brown and Co., $25.99), he challenges a number of tenets held dear by food purists. McWilliams argues that "food miles" — the distance from farm to retail outlet — is a poor measure of energy consumption. Many locavores gloss over the fact that climate and water limitations make growing certain crops inefficient and expensive. He illustrates, for example, that it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb from New Zealand than to obtain it from a local producer. He makes a similar case for fruits and vegetables.He also busts other conventional wisdom: organic farming can negatively impact the environment; genetically modified crops can keep millions of pounds of insecticides annually off U.S. croplands, and farm-raised freshwater fish may become the most sustainable form of protein.— Steve Jacob
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