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Proponents of the local food movement like to talk about keeping “food miles” to a minimum. Buying a New Zealand apple in New England is a big no-no. Imagine if instead of stores buying fruit from the South Pacific, the government was buying land in South America to produce “our own” food. Yet that is what’s happening all over the world, as wealthy countries buy or lease large tracts of land in poorer countries for agricultural production and export.