Just chiming right in here. Thanks for posting.

As an example, the native plants discussion has been ongoing in the U.S. a public way at least since the time of Jens Jensen and Frederick Law Olmsted. Debate about using native plants–and their broad use in public gardens–are "fads" stretching back more than 130 years. We see Jensen's influence now in part in the large proposed prairie restoration projects in the US Midwest.

Similarly, to the post, local foods are like an iceberg and the post sees only the part floating above the water. As a result, it overstates the idea of change to a local food "movement." Plenty of people have kept on eating bananas, coffee, and chocolate, just as plenty of people are likely to continue to shop at the farmers markets they've been shopping at for the last 10, 20, or more years. Why stop with Alice Waters in the 60s? Why not consider victory gardens during WWII, or truck farming during the Depression?

It's interesting to have an idea–minor indicators that may indicate changes in trends–illustrated by a telling story, but given the examples used, the post inadvertently makes a different point: Keep doing what you're doing and don't worry about change, because the large group of people who are doing something are likely to continue to do it. There might be some froth on the margins, but it's probably not significant.

The difference being that many of us are horrified by sickness, Type 2, wrinkles, lack of energy, all sorts of awful things brought on by overly processed food.

And many moms are horrified that their children are being poisoned. (The organic movement is HUGE with moms. The same women who were slurping down the martinis a few years back and scarfing down the fat burgers.

According to a report featured at The Green Business Conference 2 years ago, there are different types of "greenies". The lifestyle types (read selfish) are the ones who buy organic and local because they don't want to put crap in their bodies.
The dark greens tend to be idealist — they buy local for political reasons. (Very small percentage of the population).

It's the mom's who keep localvores and organic from being a trend.

I've been shopping the Hollywood Farmers Market every week, for 18 years now. It gets bigger and bigger and fuller and fuller of little kids and their parents.

We are being forced to think more local in every aspect of our lives, if we wish our communities to be sustainable.

I haven't read the entire blog archive here, but as far as I can tell, the CCO doesn't seem to be all that concerned with gathering or analyzing data of any sort, whatever its quality.

Is this true, or am I (ironically) being hypocritical and making assumptions in the absence of data?

Additionally, how could we possibly count the number of young people in the 60's, or even today, who are "kind of" hippies, but not full-fledged members? For example, I am personally "kind of" a "locavore," except I'm not going to go overboard.

If you watch the movies, of course, you'd assume that everyone under 30 was a hippie in the 60's and that everyone in the 80's was runnning around yacking on giant cell phones making insider trades. It just ain't so.

You say that "local food networks have flourished," but really what does this mean? Certainly we have more farmers' markets and co-ops these days, but does a significant portion of the population get a significant portion of its food from "local food networks?"

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/14/omnivores_dilemma_author_michael_pollans_new

One of Pollan's main points is that "local" has been co-opted, which is confusing the trend and derailing it. In his words, "Frito-Lay potato chips now is arguing that they’re local. Now, you have to remember, any product is local somewhere. Right? This food doesn’t come from Mars. But to think that Frito-Lay as a local potato chip is really a stretch."

This sounds to me a lot like a brand, Frito-Lay, that has jumped on to a trend in order to find a new audience for its chips or retain an audience that was leaving. What's tricky about this is that "local" is tied up in a lot of issues, it's an ethical trend, not just a fashion trend. An ethical trend really seems to require a lot more respect than most brands are willing to offer these ideas…

In the case of local food, a lot of people have discovered that high-quality fruits and vegetables sourced nearby taste really good. So even if they stop caring about all the ideological stuff they may still want to eat what seems tasty. This implies, however, that technological solutions to freshness-over-distance would undermine the remaining "local food" trend.