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The local food movement in America is gaining steam. The question is whether can it attract sufficient capital from the private sector to build large, profitable businesses. Without that, it's just a fad. there is the inextricable link between energy and agriculture. The food industry in the U.S is one of the largest and most wasteful consumers of energy. Various studies estimate that the food industry consumes around 10% of the nation's energy with only about 20% of it used in the actual production of food. The rest goes to processing, home refrigeration and preparation, and of course, transportation. Transportation costs also are a major factor in food prices, especially for water-heavy vegetables such as romaine lettuce.For all of these reasons and others, the local food movement in America is gaining steam. 

"Following an early career in the UK Department of Trade & Industry, Chris was a market regulator at the Association of Futures Brokers & Dealers, and then at the International Petroleum Exchange (latterly as a Director). At the IPE, he developed successful new trading mechanisms such as Exchange of Futures for Swaps; Volatility Trades; and Settlement Trades. Between 1998-2000, he founded and developed NewClear, a generic transaction confirmation concept, still widely used in global markets. Chris now works mainly in Scotland, with Nordic Enterprise Trust, to develop new partnership-based enterprise models, and related financial products and services. His work at ISRS is focused on a new generation of networked markets - which will, in Chris's view, necessarily be dis-intermediated, open decentralised and, therefore, resilient." (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/isrs/about/fellows/ChrisCook)

In this special report New Scientist finds out what's next, from printed robots to plans to bring the technology to the masses