This is Going Local Week in Indiana; and, according to the Indiana Department of Agriculture, “It is a one week challenge to Indiana citizens to eat at least one Indiana locally grown or produced food at each meal during the seven day event.”

According to a department press release, the goals of Going Local Week are to “Create an appreciation for the abundance and diversity of the Indiana food, make Indiana citizens more aware of the availability of local foods in their own communities, provide support and recognition for Indiana local food producers, and to increase Indiana residents’ consumption of locally grown/produced foods in a long-term effort to encourage them to regularly purchase more locally produced items for their weekly meals so that the consumption of Indiana locally grown and produced foods will become the norm, not a novelty at Hoosier dinner tables across the state.”

Going Local is a trend that has been gaining in popularity in recent years and, in some sectors, has taken on the aura of a religious movement. Some groups have seen this as an opportunity to advance their own agendas. As a result, an increased militarism has emerged that is now threatening to derail the whole concept.

“I encourage everyone to take part in Going Local Week,” said Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman. “If you don’t already, visit a local farmers’ market this week and buy locally grown produce and meats – or try Indiana Artisan special creations such as hot sauces, delicious baked goods or Indiana wines.”

State officials have been big supporters of local foods, as a way to help local economies and foster the development of small farming operations that sell products directly to consumers.

Purdue University has launched the MarketMaker program to help producers produce and market their products.

Indiana Farm Direct is a website that helps consumers find and connect with producers in their local communities. But, some are taking the idea of local food a bit further by saying only local foods produced a certain way are acceptable.

Going Local Week was created in 2008 by Indiana local food blogger, Victoria Wesseler, who authors the Going Local site (www.goinglocal-info.com).

She noted, “If half the families in Indiana shifted $6.25 of their current weekly food budget to the purchase of Indiana grown or produced local food, this effort would provide an annual contribution of $300 million into the local Indiana economy.”

While getting food locally is a great idea, it will always be just a part of a consumer’s choice.

Some “locavores,” as they are called, sneer at the food in grocery stores which often travels thousands of miles to reach a consumer’s plate. They decry the use of energy needed to bring good to a grocery store.

Yet, the reality is that our food production and transportation system is one of the most efficient systems in the world. Stephen Budiansky, in a recent editorial in - of all places - The New York Times, pointed out that “Studies have shown that whether it’s grown in California or Maine, or whether it’s organic or conventional, about 5,000 calories of energy go into one pound of lettuce. Given how efficient trains and tractor-trailers are, shipping a head of lettuce across the country actually adds next to nothing to the total energy bill.”

He said it takes about a tablespoon of diesel fuel to move one pound of freight 3,000 miles by rail: that works out to about 100 calories of energy. If it goes by truck, it’s about 300 calories, still a negligible amount in the overall picture. Transportation accounts for about 14 percent of the total energy consumed by the American food system.

Celebrity chefs and popular environmental commentators sing the praises of local food while calling large-scale modern agriculture evil, inefficient and wasteful. Yet as Budiansky wrote, agriculture accounts for just 2 percent of our nation’s energy usage.

“That energy is mainly devoted to running farm machinery and manufacturing fertilizer,” he wrote. “In return for that quite modest energy investment, we have fed hundreds of millions of people, liberated tens of millions from backbreaking manual labor and spared hundreds of millions of acres for nature preserves, forests and parks that otherwise would have come under the plow.”

Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported that a growing chorus of writers, politicians and bloggers is challenging the locavore movement, painting it as naive and elitist, at best, and dangerous to the livelihood of conventional commodity farmers, at worst.

Economist Hiroko Shimizu and University of Toronto geographer Pierre Desrochers are finishing a 2011 book, tentatively called In Praise of the 10,000 Mile Diet, which argues locavorism is a misleading marketing fad that, among other problems, ignores the threat it poses to the current affordability of food and to the economic health of developing countries.

Yet, there is something to be said for going to a farmers’ market or a farm and buying locally produced food. It can be a very enjoyable experience and may help broaden your diet and give you an improved understanding of how food is produced.

It will also help you get to know your neighbors and your state a bit better. But keep in mind, just because you met the man who raised it or it has a picture of an Amish buggy on the label, that does not necessarily make it better.

The Going Local movement must realize it is only part of the overall food system and that commodity agriculture is not its enemy. Budiansky warned that, unless the local movement can find a way to work with mainstream agriculture, it will “devolve into another one of those self-indulgent -  and self-defeating - do-gooder dogmas.”

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with comments for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.