Rankin argues for a re-framing, or reformulating of the idea of local food production, emphasizing a need to design more efficient forms of global transportation and shipping infrastructure (which theoretically shrinks or trumps geographical distance) rather than any imposed set distance limitation for food sourcing.

Rankin’s maps are a superb documentation of corporate industrial food production as it currently exists (and, by the way, its massive over-surpluses).  They reveal the uneven, economy-of-scale structure of industrial agriculture and point to the complex web of mobility infrastructures required to distribute it (in FoodNYC, Wangari Maathai speculates that the industrial production, distribution, and consumption of food is responsible for one-third of the human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions contribute to climate change).