This article is about the trend of increasing demand for locally raised meat, and the problem of a lack of local slaughterhouses to process the demand. While the anecdotes about the inconvenience of taking pigs to the slaughterhouse and the resistance to the conversion of a water buffalo farm to a slaughter facility may not seem particularly pressing issues of international political concern, it made me think about the locavore movement's power to affect the dynamic of international relations. If trust in the prevalence of peace among nations is predicated upon the complex interdependence of their economic interests, particularly when food is an important international commodity, what does it mean for this stable relationship if environmental or social concerns drive an economy to localize rather than expand and encourages only very local, rather than international, exchange of dependency? If peaceful, stable democracies are less likely to engage in conflict with each other in particular because of their intimately entwined interests, is their mutual interest in sustainability (assuming their constructed identity includes environmental concern as part of their "good state" complex) of any consequence in terms of ensuring peace?
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It's very interesting how you connected the locavore movement with international relations. I think that international economies will remain very entwined, however, even if the locavore movement really takes off. We depend on other countries for certain kinds of foods when it just isn't practical or possible to grow them locally. Also, international trade depends on a lot of goods, other than food, many of which it would be impractical, if not impossible, to produce on a local scale. While the "local" movement may affect certain industries or commodities, I don't think it will have a large impact overall on IR. I believe that as long as it is profitable for companies to base their manufacturing (or other, such as service) operations overseas, they will continue to do so. And as long as nations are connected by this economic bond, they will think twice about entering into conflicts with each other.
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