Pay more, eat less?

Eight dollars for a dozen eggs? $3.90 for a pound of peaches?

We can remember when so many farmers came to town for breakfast at one local cafe that an observer cracked "Main Street looks like a pickup truck convention."  That cafe, and those rusted F-150s, have now faded away.  Long time Finger Lakes residents have seen well-funded city folks arrive to acquire expensive farmland, part of yet another "back to the land" movement. 

Third generation farmers who live and work on roads named after their grandparents are now dismissed as nothing more than "row croppers."  The latest movement, flourishing in academia, finds virtue in having consumers return to limited food choices, sold at higher prices, produced by stoop labor. 

Writing in the WSJ, Virginia Postrel subjects the local food argument to her freedom-based analysis:  No Free Locavore Lunch.