New(ish) study on the ecological footprint of food

[Mallet]

One of the biggest areas of controversy in food discussion lately is the "local vs. global" debate, which is a subset of broader concerns on sustainability. The debate can be framed in a number of ways, ranging from economic to environmental impacts. Here's a few of the recent eGullet discussions on the topic, providing much of the background:

"Ethical" Food Bad for the Planet, So sez the Economist

Food Miles is a Crock

Michael Pollan's Open Letter to Whole Foods

This article "Sustainable Food Consumption at a Sub-national Level: An

Ecological Footprint, Nutritional and Economic Analysis" by Collins and Fairchild has recently received a lot of press:

Article Available Here (or PM me for the pdf)

Abstract:

This paper uses the ecological footprint to measure the environmental impact of food and drink consumption at a sub-national level. The case study area selected is Cardiff, the capital city of Wales. The paper begins by explaining what an ecological footprint is and how it is measured. We describe how an ecological footprint was calculated for Cardiff, with specific emphasis on the food and drink component. The main part of this paper focuses on Cardiff's ecological footprint results for food and drink and how we might begin to make residents' consumption more sustainable. We present and analyse the results of several scenarios developed to reduce the environmental impact of Cardiff's food and drink consumption. These scenarios focus on changing the type of food and drink that the average Cardiff resident consumes at home. Here we also analyse the results from a nutritional and economic perspective. Finally, in the Conclusions section we discuss the value of using the ecological footprint to measure the environmental impact of consumption at a sub-national level. We also discuss how this combined analysis can provide a more comprehensive account of food and drink consumption at the sub-national level, and better inform policy decisions on sustainable food and drink consumption.