I was in the grocery store a few weeks ago and laughed when I was looking at some fruit, and it said "locally grown!" and the label on the fruit said "Florida" - right, Florida to DC is so local.

So, is Walmart just hanging the word Local over their produce? Like, "Oh, no, that sign has nothing to do with the produce. They are just near each other..." Or is Walmart getting into local produce (seems unlikely). Also, what types of Walmart have produce?

@pecan 3.14159265: just a 700 mile drive around the corner.

To be fair, my local B&N has a pretty awesome "local books" section with local history, local photography, local interest, local authors, etc. It's a surprisingly big section.

I'm a lot more impressed with that than with the "independently-minded buyers" idea they're pitching to SEEM local.

@bairdwallace: Super Walmarts and Walmart Neighborhood Grocery both carry produce.

And Sears is not my Hometown Store.

Ahhhh, once again combat this new "woo", I turn my skeptical eye to Skeptoid, who breaks down stuff like this and reveals the truth! Take a minute or two to either read or listen to the episode:

[skeptoid.com]

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): Definitely, and B&N has been doing that for as long as I've gone there for books, so it's not like they're jumping on a trendy bandwagon, either. Every B&N I've ever been to has a "local books" table.

Seems to me like the only people who are actually dumb enough to buy into this could give a crap less if something is local or not. You'll never, ever convince an authentic crystal-gripping-hippie-crunch-face that anything in Wal-Mart is 'local'...

I sent in a tip about this awhile ago, but I discovered a beer masquerading as a local beer at my grocery store. Its varieties were named after local places, and it had a local address - which turned out to be the downtown post office. I never did figure out where the beer is actually coming from, but I figure they must bottle the same stuff and slap different labels on it in different cities. Plus it was awful.

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): But WHERE were those local books printed?

@Ayarkay: It comes from a magical creature.

@pecan 3.14159265: In fact many veges and fruits sold in supermarkets are imported. So "Local" can mean "US".

@bairdwallace: There are signs that claim that some of the produce is locally grown.

Local?
Go to your local greenmarket. You can find the closest one here. I like the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza ones the best.

Bring on the lawyers. wal mart is incredibly stupid for even attempting this scheme. I just wait for the false advertising claims and class actions to start.

@Vandelay Import Export: Yes, because everyone on these forums lives in NY.

@Eyebrows McGee (now with more baby!): When I worked at a bookstore, we had a local author that would just walk in and sign all the copies of his book. It wasn't a big seller and it was super annoying because if signed them, the corporate office wouldn't take those books back and we were forced to keep like 15 copies of his lame-o book in the store. It was an awkward conversation for my manager to explain why we didn't want to have signed copies of his book in the store.

@Bob Lu:
If they mean US, why can't they say US. Local still means nearby in my book.

@Vandelay Import Export: Local? Not really.
I can bike to this one: [www.godowntownraleigh.com] . Your 'closest one' would require a bit more travel.

@GitEmSteveDave_TheREALChrisChan: I make my own books at home from banana peels (locally grown) and used coffee grinds (also locally grown). That's as local as you can get.

@MostlyHarmless: There are numerous local farmer's markets in most major cities.

It's funny, in that obliquely, what they're saying is that when given the preference, a sizable number of people would prefer local-owned businesses over the mega-chains.
Too bad Sam Walton ate them all up, leaving only picked bones in his path. That's the depressing thing about these sorts of things. By the time that we realize something precious was lost, it's too late to bring them back.
Independent radio stations (both AM & FM) are much the same. Good luck in launching a new music format (or Hell, even an old format that doesn't suck) or a new talk-radio host, when conglomerates can crush them by offering a "similar" product at a loss since the marginal cost of doing so is a fraction of what it costs to create a new one.

I know it's often not the case that stuff labeled "local" in stores, is not. However, there's a Big-Y grocery store not far from here, which labels its local stuff by the farm it came from. It's not an absolute guarantee it's local, but at least you could call the farm and ask if they sold anything to Big-Y recently.

@PsiCop: Opening sentence is gibberish! Should have been:

"I know it's often not the case that stuff labeled "local" in stores, is local."

Aaaarrrggh!

@henrygates: ...cause everyone lives in a major city.

@treimel: It is a problem to me when a company considers local to be over 700miles away. The small grocery store I shop at considers local to be within 2 counties. Anything further from that has the country and/or state labeled on it clearly. Honestly, that's how it should be done. But, it has to be difficult to source for a huge supermarket chain and know the exact county everything came from.

@pecan 3.14159265 is in a curry coma: that's great...so was it when I saw locally grown at WalMart (Texas), and then looked down and saw pineapples that were grown in Costa Rica.

My LOCAL farmer's market only allows food that was grown within 100 miles.

@pecan 3.14159265 has curry..om nom nom: And even if you do have access to a farmer's market, that doesn't necessarily mean everything is local. Nothing to stop a stand from bringing stuff over from the supermarket, and I know that at our nearest one stuff can come from a couple states away as well as nearby.

@Trai_Dep:

"Good luck in launching a new music format (or Hell, even an old format that doesn't suck) or a new talk-radio host "

Former radio guy here (Am &FM). I must respectfully disagree. Local radio has been taken over by out of town consultants that in many cases never listen to the station that they are consulting. (That's why they all sound the same !) But if you have a real talent locally that wants to break into talk,he or she needs to have something to say and not try to imitate the big names on syndicated radio.Most local hosts are just little Rush wannabes that want to score a few good ratings books and move up to the next bigger market. They don't take time to hone their craft or develop their own style.They are unwilling to pay their dues on a 250 watt AM in the middle of nowhere and learn what they are doing.

Music. Sweet Jesus, there are no real Program Directors anymore. (Schedule Coordinators is more like it) They play what HQ wants them to play and that's that. A real locally programmed Class c FM done by a pro would FORCE the corporate stations to change,but all of the big stick FM's are in the hands of Clear Channel, Citadel and the like. (Fat lot of good it has done them. They are both broke).

A grocery store in our area is attempting to cash in the local phenomenon as well, but is calling their "local" stuff "homegrown." But there is no info about origin, which makes me suspicious. I'd like to assume the best but it's not in my nature. I wonder if there are legal stipulations for the term "homegrown" yet.

@floraposte: I was thinking that about a "Local Honey!" stand that popped on a street corner near me.. Who's to say where the honey actually came from?

I bought honey from HEB instead that was labled as "Alvin, TX" which is darn close to Houston. I was hoping it might help with my alergies.. eh.

I'm not quite sure what to think about the whole "locavore" thing. There are many cases where it makes little sense to purchase and consume a locally-produced product where a product produced far away makes far more sense. Economically, environmentally, and otherwise. For instance, wheat grows quite well in America's midwest; why would I want to buy "local" flour, where wheat takes up farmland that could be far better used to produce other crops. Why would I want to buy "local" hothouse-grown vegetables when I can buy produce grown in CA for less money and with resource consumption? If I have a desire to eat citrus, well, it just doesn't grow well at all in most of the country...

Yes, if a produce item grows well where I live, and it's in season, it is silly to buy products trucked in from who-knows-where, but there are far too many things that either do not grow well where I live, or are only available during a very short growing season.

Which is "better"? Do I eat fresh vegetables grown in CA and shipped to the mid-Atlantic during the winter, or do I eat "local" veggies frozen/canned? The CA veggies have been trucked across the country, while the local veggies have had much of their texture, flavor and nutrition sacrificed to preserve them. (And have you ever tried canned asparagus? Yech...) There is the "fresh" alternative of eating carefully stored root veggies; anyone up for months-old potatoes stored in the cellar my house doesn't have? Didn't think so.

although speaking as a new englander, i do consider dunkin donuts to be the local coffee shop. not that i think the coffee comes from massachusetts or anything. and i know its a big corporation, but um, for some reason, it's the local coffee shop.

@pecan 3.14159265 is in a curry coma: well in most of the non cities i've lived in or near, we had these magical things called farms that had stands to sell their products. sure you could only buy whatever crop they specialized in...but you could see the fields it was picked in, that counts for something

@Snarkysnake: I donno. In the pre-Clear Channel days, I remember the 1,000 petri dishes fermenting that radio used to be. Sure, there'd be a lot of follow-the-leader dreck, but then you'd have some insane program director working for an owner with nothing to lose, then Disco, New Wave, Hip-Hop, Grunge or House would be played. Something new and different that would break through.
I know LA has had two House stations that did well, only to be crushed by Clear Channel (bought out, even though one of them (Groove Radio) did better on a regional basis than the Top 40 Pop leader, and the other was given CC's mighty sales force for a pittance, if they'd only change formats to compete against KROQ, whose format CC didn't compete against).
The irony, as you note, is that the conglomerates ended up slaying the golden goose. People stopped listening to radio for new music, since there wasn't any. They chose iTunes instead, and are happier for it. Their listeners will never return, yet CC's debt load is crushing them while ad rates plummet.
So, much like Wal-Mart, they moved in, they slayed the local competition, then sucked all the water from the well, leaving a desert never to reflower. In the long run, it can't work. But in the short run, it can work just long enough for the Wall Street guys to get their cut, the CEOs to cash in their stock then flee and destroy whatever there was that make the market desirable in the first place.

Agree completely with your comments about the Strike It Rich, No Dues-Paying Needed hustlers and out-of-town corporate consultants, by the way. But I think that eliminating the ownership caps is what slayed radio as a medium, at least in a macro sense.

@GitEmSteveDave_TheREALChrisChan: I know you're being facetious, but some of them are printed locally. We have a lot of local amateur historians and things, and there are a couple of local printing houses (signs, newsletters, pamphlets, corporate books) that as a sideline print local-interest books. We own one that's really gorgeous line drawings of every county courthouse in the state (why'd someone write it? no idea. but my husband goes all over the state to court and uses it to keep score, it's fun). There's another that's about local female artists in the 1800s to about the 1920s. Really random stuff, but generally very interesting. The local presses tend to print those.

Sometimes they're in cooperation with the local historical society or museum or something, but sometimes they're just random. B&N carries an awful lot of them, far more than the local museum that has a "local books" section.

@sponica: I think it's pretty much an agricultural impossibility for coffee to be grown, anywhere in New England. In fact, IIRC the only place in the US where it can be grown, is Hawai'i. And the coffee grown there IS very good ... although swindlers have been known to sell South American coffee as Kona on occasion.

@Trai_Dep:

"eliminating the ownership caps is what slayed radio as a medium"

Don't forget the duopoly rules. They prevented the over- concentration of media in the hands of one or just a few hands. Newspapers couldn't own radio stations. TV's had to divest their radio stations (even though some kept their TV call letters). Ownership entities like CC were impossible by law. There were still a lot of little owner groups that went bankrupt (raise your hand if you have ever had a paycheck bounce),but there was always somebody that came up through the business willing to try something else.Now,lots of stations go dark and stay dark because they don't want to pitch money away competing with the big chains.

@sponica: Just because it's next door doesn't mean it's local. The origin of the food is the point here, not the location of the restaurant or store.

@PsiCop: Although, if they could concentrate gumption, Yankee can-do-ism and laconic terseness into small, black lumps suitable to fit in a grinder, they'd have something.
Unsure of what to call it though. Or how it would taste.

There's a big billboard in Cambridge where Citgo claims they are local. Sure, the people who own the franchise are, but then, wouldn't that make all franchises "local"? I think they're missing the point.

@Ayarkay:

Ah yes, the creative marketing effort of mega-beer-corp.

Local?

Locally desired products?

Locally produced products?

Both are "local".

Personally I think local is locally produced, but in the B&N example the local means products (books) relevant to the local area.

So what is the legal definition of "local" with regards to brick and mortar stores?

@copious28: I bet you can't get real local pineapples anywhere in the states except for Hawaii.

@thisheregirafFe: While I cringe at your description of people who buy "local" products, I agree with your sentiment that it's very faddish. I find a lot of it has to do with this new "it's chic to be green" trend that seems to boil down to a new kind of one-upsmanship among certain segments of the population where people are no longer comparing sports cars, but are now comparing how long they've used eco-friendly shopping bags, driven a Prius, or bought "local/organic" produce.

@pecan 3.14159265:

Locally grown*

*as measured in country mile units

@babyruthless: well not commercially grown pineapples. but you can grow your own if you are REALLY patient. my parents used to save all their pineapple tops and plant them [florida] and they grew into pretty ornemental plants. and were quite surprised when about 5 years later one of them bloomed and grew a pineapple. now they have about 8 plants and get a few pineapples a year.
if you live in states that only get a few hard freezes a year and own your own piece of yard, you can probably do it too. and pineapples are pretty enough to pass most HOAs