… is from page 101 of Pierre Desrochers’s and Hiroko Shimizu’s information- and insight-packed 2012 book, The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet (footnote deleted):
Another misconception promoted by [‘local-food’] activists is that the absence (or much smaller volume) of packaging material at farmers’ markets has significant environmental benefits, a notion that conveniently ignores the fact that food packaging has the dual advantage of protecting food from microbes and greatly prolonging shelf life. These advantages, in turn, significantly increase the probability of food being consumed instead of ending in a landfill or incinerator.
