Band 6+: Food travels thousands of miles from producers to consumers. Some people think that it would be better for the environment and economy if people ate only local food produced by farmers.

It is often argued that it is better for the environment and economy to make people only consume their local food. From my perspective, it seems absurd since it is not efficient for modern society.

To begin with, I accept that having local foods can be a resolution for environmental and economic problems. First of all, eating only local foods can be helpful to prevent environmental problems. This is because most transportation emits exhausted fumes since they burn fuels during the journey. For example, many Koreans like eating bananas, however, they are produced in the Philippines which is located about 3,000 km away. This means that they have to be transported by ships to Korea, and it causes a large consumption of fuels. Therefore, the consumption can cause air pollution and global heating, so the ecosystem can be destructed, and the number of natural disasters has increased such as the increase of surface of sea and deforestation. As a result, some islands in the Pacific Ocean are sinking under the sea. Also, having only local foods can help local farmers economically. This is because they can gain more income since local individuals would purchase their crops as alternatives for foreign food.

On the other hand, I am convinced that consuming only local food is not suitable for modern society. First of all, having other regions’ food can be helpful for the economy. This means that each country has a proper climate for cultivating crops which are fit on local climate, so they can provide their crops to other countries for a cheap price. For example, the Korean government enacted a law to prevent importing foreign food excessively to protect local food. Therefore, in the case of wheat, the price of Korean wheat is now 50 dollars per 1kg, while the figure for Argentines wheat records 15 dollars. As a result, many bakeries in Korea use foreign wheat since local wheat is expensive compared to foreign wheat. Moreover, many modern people usually enjoy foreign food such as mango and banana. In other words, if the situation where people have to consume only local food happend, they would feel stressed since foreign food has its own attraction such as sweet taste.

In conclusion, food trade is more beneficial for modern people than eating only local food since it can reduce the price of crops and provide pleasure to individuals.