"Local food" stupidity in California

Comrade Zombie was kind enough to share his disgust with liberal pre-occupation with promoting the local food. I most surely share the feelings, and I think it's fair to add a few thoughts on the subject.

Firstly, it does not surprise me that schools in Berkley, California substitute classes on math and reading with agricultural work. After all, same schools, decided to close science labs because White students (and quite possibly evil Asian students) spent inordinate time learning science, while some minorities (Blacks and Latinos) did not bother to do so. So, by all standards, Berkley is the place where sanity is rare, and stupidity rules.

But the whole "local-foodism" and stress on teaching kids to grow own food is hardly new to the far left. Two examples stand in mind.

The Great Leap Forward
The first one is surely the Great Leap Forward in China, when Mao ordered peasants to establish small backyard steel furnaces in every commune and in each urban neighborhood. According to wikipedia: "Huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were made to produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces the local environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and furniture of peasants' houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were requisitioned to supply the "scrap" for the furnaces so that the wildly optimistic production targets could be met. Many of the male agricultural workers were diverted from the harvest to help the iron production as were the workers at many factories, schools and even hospitals."

The result of Mao's attempt to produce steel and iron locally was tones and tones of useless crap - and the starvation and deaths of millions of people.


Idea Juche
Another infamous attempt of state-wide "localism" was tried in North Korea. One of the tenets of Kim Chens Ir's ideology of Juche is local self-sufficiency. Indeed, what's the need in trade with other countries if patriotic Korean people can produce anything they could possibly need?! And why can't all citizens produce their own food?! Of course, it is widely known that North Korea is one of the most poor and oppressed society, and millions of people die from starvation every decade in this communist nation.

All in all, as a former Soviet citizen, I recognize the liberal ideas of localism and "local-foodism" as nothing more than a rehearse of tired communist principles, which underlie Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and North Korean "Juche".