Policy Primer "Yes We Have No Bananas: A Critique of the Food Mile Perspective" (with Hiroko Shimizu). Mercatus Policy Series, Policy Primer No. 8, October 2008.

Shorter Texts

Shimizu, H., and P. Desrochers. 2010. "‘Food miles’: il dilemma degli attivisti e una scomoda verità." La Valle del Siele, November 11.

Desrochers, P. and Shimizu, H. 2010. "La souveraineté alimentaire n’est pas gage de développement durable." www.iedm.org, October 16.

Shimizu, H., and P. Desrochers. 2010. "Food Miles: The Local Food Activists’ Dilemma (a global warming inconvenient truth)." MasterResource, October 15.

Desrochers, P. and H. Shimizu. 2010. "L’autosuffisance alimentaire n’est pas gage de développement durable." LeMonde.fr, September 29.

Desrochers, P. and H. Shimizu. 2010. "L’autosuffisance alimentaire n’est pas gage de développement durable." Institut économique Molinari, Economic Note, October 7, 2010.

Shimizu, H., and P. Desrochers. 2010. "Will buying food locally save the planet?" Montreal Economic Institute, Economic Note, February 16.

Desrochers, P. and H. Shimizu. 2010. "L’achat local de nourriture sauvera-t-il la planète?" Institut économique de Montréal, Note économique, 16 février.

Shimizu, H. and P. Desrochers. 2009. "Buy Global." Reader's Digest (Canada), June 2009, pp. 70-74. (no link)

Shimizu, H. and P. Desrochers. 2008. "Buy Global - The 'Food Mile' Perspective Severely Distorts the Environmental Impacts of Agricultural Production." National Post, November 7.


More Substantial Pieces

Desrochers, P. and H. Shimizu. 2010. "L’autosuffisance alimentaire n’est pas gage de développement durable." Institut économique Molinari, Research Paper, October 7, 2010.

Desrochers, P. and H. Shimizu. "Arguments contre la souveraineté alimentaire et l'agriculture de proximité: essai de synthèse historique." Possibles, vol. 34, no. 1-2 (été 2010), pp. 191-228 (invited submission).

Desrochers, Pierre. 2010. "A Critique of the 'Food Miles' Perspective." In Max Falque and Henri Lamotte (eds). Climate Change and Air Pollution: Property Rights, Economics and Environment. Brussels: Bruylant, pp. 129-146.

Shimizu, H. and P. Desrochers. 2008. Policy Primer "Yes We Have No Bananas: A Critique of the Food Mile Perspective." Mercatus Policy Series, Policy Primer No. 8, October.


Shorter texts (Pierre)

Desrochers, P. 2010. "L’autosufficienza alimentare non è garanzia di sviluppo sostenibile." La Valle del Siele, October 29.

Desrochers, P. 2010. "La spesa a km 0: una moda effimera." La Valle del Siele, October 25.

Desrochers, Pierre, and Sarah Elton. 2010. "Local food: Is it good or bad?" The Globe and Mail, March 17.

Desrochers, Pierre. 2010. "Local Food: A Fad that won't Last." CBC Commentary, February 15.

Desrochers, Pierre. 2010. "La souveraineté alimentaire et l'achat local: Une mode éphémère." Commentaires de Radio-Canada, 15 février.


Shorter texts (Hiroko)

Shimizu, H. 2010. "In Praise of the 10,000 Mile Diet." PERC Reports: Vol. 28, No. 1, February.


Papers under preparation

Hiroko and I are currently working on the following projects:

          • a paper explaining in more detail the economic rationale behind the historical emergence of our globalized food supply chain;
          • a history of previous "buy local food" movements going back a few centuries, along with reasons why they all failed in the long run;
          • a critique of the main arguments of the new generation of food activists.


Book under preparation

The Locavore's Dilemma - A Manifesto in Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu.
 

HIROKO SHIMIZU was trained as an economist in one of Japan's premier universities. She holds a Master's of Public Policy from the University of Osaka. She has studied and worked at several academic institutions and private companies in Canada, Japan, China and the United States where she was, among others things, an International Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Policy Studies and a Research Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center (www.perc.org). She has travelled worldwide to over 30 countries. Based on her international experiences and observations, she describes her policy approach as "applying global common sense" to politically correct but ultimately mistaken ideas. She has been published in three languages (Japanese, English and French) in both the academic and popular literature.

PIERRE DESROCHERS is Associate Professor of geography at the University of Toronto. His main research interests are economic development, technical innovation, business-environment interactions, and energy policy and food policy. He maintains a detailed website at http://epsem.erin.utoronto.ca/desrochers/.

His detailed CV can be found at http://epsem.erin.utoronto.ca/desrochers/cv.htm.

High resolution photos of both Hiroko Shimizu and Pierre Desrochers can be found here.