Food Miles is a Crock

[Fat Guy]

There were just six letters in the New York Times on this subject, in response to the earlier op-ed.

Two of the better-argued points, from two different letters:

if it is so inefficient to produce lamb locally that it is better for the environment to import it from New Zealand, maybe, just maybe, we should be eating less of it.

and

Because outlets for locally grown meat and produce are fewer and farther between than ordinary grocery stores, most consumers have to drive farther to get to them. If each locavore drives his Prius an extra 10 miles to buy a local chicken, that’s 3.5 pounds of emissions, or 1,400 pounds per ton of chicken (assuming beefy five-pound birds). Even if each buyer stocks up on several chickens, that’s a lot of carbon.

[Fat Guy]

I wonder how efficient home and small-scale gardening is. I'm not particularly concerned with "carbon footprint" since I think the data on emissions and global warming are not compelling, however I'm a firm believer in reducing energy consumption -- especially oil consumption -- for a variety of reasons, and I'm also concerned about soil and water resources. Growing food in your garden at home, or in some sort of community garden, certainly reduces energy expenditures from transporting the food once it's picked. But what about the other inputs? When I see people standing there with hoses spraying fresh drinking water on their tomato plants all day long, I have to wonder whether a large-scale commercial operation would use so much water per plant. I also see a lot of people starting their gardens from plants that have already been grown a bit somewhere else, so those surely require plenty of transportation -- especially since they come in soil already. Is anybody aware of a computation of the energy and resource inputs per pound of produce from a home garden versus a commercial farm?

[SundaySous]

Ya know if we could make goat the new cow we could seriously reduce emissions.

What the hell is goat suppose to taste like anyway? I've had it twice and I'm pretty sure they got it wrong both times.

[MarketStEl]

I wonder how efficient home and small-scale gardening is. [...] When I see people standing there with hoses spraying fresh drinking water on their tomato plants all day long, I have to wonder whether a large-scale commercial operation would use so much water per plant.

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That's a stat I'd like to see too.

In a forum on transportation and urban policy that that I participate in, I've seen from time to time a statistic (factoid?) cited to the effect that city dwellers use less water per acre of land than farmers do. But someone has to grow the food. If city-dwellers grew their own food, and this statistic is correct, then the difference should disappear or maybe even favor the farmer as the use of water for food production would be on top of the other ways all those households use water.

However, what's not clear from that statistic is how many people are fed (or clothed; cotton is a very water-intensive crop, which is one reason why it shouldn't be grown in California's Central Valley) off that acre of land put to the plow. If that land feeds enough people to account for several acres' worth of urban water use, then the statistic may be less meaningful (and pro-development) than it seems at first glance.

[details of closed-loop small farming operation deleted]

I dont want to hear about how this is just for rich people.  We drive an older car that we have paid off, ONE car.  We have never been on a vacation (anywhere) as a family (as of today, we have been married for 11 years), before that I had not been on vacation before that since 1992.  We choose to spend our money on things like our land, our garden, our animals, all so that we can have a sustainable garden/system to give to our children for when our (yours, mine) industrialized world is no longer sustainable.

[...]

Many Americans never chose to move into the McMansions and jumbo-mortgages in wasteland subdivisions that metastasized over prime farmland.

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The operative word in all of this is choose.

One of the benefits--if you wish to view them as such--of living in an urbanized as opposed to an agrarian society is that individuals and households within it can choose to do something other than produce food for their own sustenance with their money. We have generally regarded this as a Good Thing, for by breaking the tie between humanity and the land, the creation of an agricultural surplus permitted us to pursue a whole bunch of other things, including the philosophical pursuits that lead you to explain and defend the choices you make so well, that we have come to call "civilization". And the words "civilization" and "city" share the same root, and the distinguishing characteristic feature of the city is that it is made possible by the surplus food a relative handful of farmers produce.

You are correct that you need not be rich to grow all your own food; the presence of community gardens in some of Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods also attests to this (or at least its potential for realization). But you probably do have to be well-off in order to do that and enjoy most of the other fruits of civilization at the same time. Many others choose to do the latter with the funds they have and leave it to others to grow their food for them. Nothing wrong with that, IMO. Nor is there anything wrong with showing the people who make this choice ways to spend their food dollars that produce greater good for a greater number of people and the ecosystems of our planet. But we should make sure that when we claim an environmental (as opposed to a moral) benefit for our actions, those benefits really do exist.

Edited to fix comparative adjective.

Edited August 12, 2007 by MarketStEl (log)

[anina marcus]

Another matter is just general economics. The market becomes less efficient if the buying public places a high cost (defined as any disincentive in addition to actual price) on food miles. As markets become less efficient, waste increases, quality of living is reduced.

Also, food miles discourages specialization and the economics of scale are lost.

The most efficient market solution is to simply penalize carbon emission production (through international treaties and pollution credits). That way the market assigns the true value of pollution from transportation and pricing becomes more efficient.

I also agree that on face "food miles" is a bullshit argument usually espoused by under-informed yuppies who buy everything organic because they can afford it -- the Whole Foods crowd, if you will (OK, maybe that's getting too controversial). This is also the same crowd that loves sushi, so I always like to bring that up when one of them starts going off on "food miles" and then they quickly have a change of heart.

I'll buy local if it tastes better, not because of pollution.

←

I love what you said and how you said it...anina

[Anna Friedman Herlihy]

I wonder how efficient home and small-scale gardening is. I'm not particularly concerned with "carbon footprint" since I think the data on emissions and global warming are not compelling, however I'm a firm believer in reducing energy consumption -- especially oil consumption -- for a variety of reasons, and I'm also concerned about soil and water resources. Growing food in your garden at home, or in some sort of community garden, certainly reduces energy expenditures from transporting the food once it's picked. But what about the other inputs? When I see people standing there with hoses spraying fresh drinking water on their tomato plants all day long, I have to wonder whether a large-scale commercial operation would use so much water per plant. I also see a lot of people starting their gardens from plants that have already been grown a bit somewhere else, so those surely require plenty of transportation -- especially since they come in soil already. Is anybody aware of a computation of the energy and resource inputs per pound of produce from a home garden versus a commercial farm?

←

Steven, I can't give you studies or figures (wish I had the time to research this though), but watering a garden with municipal water sprayed from a sprayer (especially when the sun is out) is a huge waste of water, energy, and chemicals (fluoride, chlorine, etc.). Right now we have a drip irrigation system which I know cuts water usage dramatically (especially since we now tend to water at night when there is little evaporation--the drip irrigation makes it possible to do so without worry of plant diseases), although we are not on a metered water system here, so I couldn't tell you by how much we have reduced consumption (I know there are studies out there though comparing hose/sprinkler watering to drip systems). We are hoping to move into a rain barrel set-up to drive the drip irrigation system. When we do that, I would hazard a guess to say that we will be using far fewer energy-driven water resources (just the initial costs of making the drip irrigation hoses and parts and the barrels) than most commercial farms. Right now, my guess would be that it's about even.

As for the buying plants in a nursery and then putting them in your garden, that seems also to be quite energy wasteful. We start everything from seed, and have been beginning to try to harvest seed along with veggies to be able to stop buying seeds (although in certain varieties this is legally prohibited). Certainly everything we start from seed direct in the garden (about 3/4 of what we grow) eliminates most energy costs (just the shipping and packaging of the original seeds). I do wonder if the cost of our grow light and heated germination mat for a folding buffet table's worth of seedlings for about 3 months cost less energy-wise than what a commercial nursery would output combined with the costs of transport. The benefit of doing this for me is that my seedlings are healthier, don't introduce any unwanted pests to my micro-environment, and I can grow a more unusual selection of plants (things like heirlooms are not often available at garden centers).

I just really think that if every family started growing as much as they could (timewise, spacewise, moneywise), it would for sure make a dent in the energy/resources use in this country. It is amazing what even a partially sunny windowsill can grow with a tiny bit of attention. And there are so many ways to water with water that would otherwise be wasted (e.g. keep a few buckets around for catching the shower water as you're waiting for it to heat up--this takes no extra time, just some forethought!)

[Mallet]

I'll add a tag line of my own: Given the same production system, food miles make sense.

Remember that NZ lamb came out on top was because its production system (pasture, minimal input) was so much more efficient than the UK's (reliance on grain and concentrates). Similarly-produced lamb certainly does exist in the UK and sticking to this product in season (late summer-fall, from lamb born in spring and exclusively pasture-fed) would almost certainly be more energy efficient than importing it.

I agree that part of the problem with food miles (noted upthread) is that it has become a substitute for critical thinking, in much the same way as the latest fad diet suppresses thoughtful eating. Transportation is simply not the determinant of sustainability, and I would hope that the message we take from a study such as the NZ vs UK lamb isn't that food miles is a crock but that , at this stage, the production system may have a greater impact. Once you're buying from a source you think is raising their products right, it makes sense to buy local. (To pre-empt arguments against efficiency of transport within a country, I point to the lamb study itself

The transport of the finished product within New Zealand, the UK and any

other country involved is not included within the boundaries of the analysis i.e. only the

transport between countries is included. This is unlikely to affect the conclusions reached

however, as these distances will tend to cancel each other out, especially since New Zealand

and the UK are similar-sized countries

)

[John Whiting]

I'm not particularly concerned with "carbon footprint" since I think the data on emissions and global warming are not compelling. . .

Steven, thank you for reminding us that you are a global warming and precautionary principle skeptic. It's a useful framework within which to evaluate your comments on sustainability.

[Fat Guy]

And we'll be sure to remember, in evaluating your comments, that you think the world should adopt the agricultural practices of Cuba!

[Carrot Top]

John answered my question on the Cuba thing in a post above and it seemed to me that his answer was quite intelligent and well-balanced.

On the whole I have to say (as I am someone who questions, without having a "side") the person who has had the most success in this thread in leading me towards things that I can use towards finding answers has been John. He has not insisted, not used straightforward rhetoric, has not linked his responses to anything political that some people are "clued in on" that others somehow presumably sadly aren't, has not had an attitude of presuming to know best, and has quite intelligently used examples of historic events and current events which he takes out of his pocket and lays on the table for perusal. To my mind, these are the acts of a more-than-capable teacher who leaves the final resolution of the question up to the student without taking out a hammer and anvil and saying "this must be so because I said so", at all.

[Darcie B]

I wonder how efficient home and small-scale gardening is. I'm not particularly concerned with "carbon footprint" since I think the data on emissions and global warming are not compelling, however I'm a firm believer in reducing energy consumption -- especially oil consumption -- for a variety of reasons, and I'm also concerned about soil and water resources. Growing food in your garden at home, or in some sort of community garden, certainly reduces energy expenditures from transporting the food once it's picked. But what about the other inputs? When I see people standing there with hoses spraying fresh drinking water on their tomato plants all day long, I have to wonder whether a large-scale commercial operation would use so much water per plant. I also see a lot of people starting their gardens from plants that have already been grown a bit somewhere else, so those surely require plenty of transportation -- especially since they come in soil already. Is anybody aware of a computation of the energy and resource inputs per pound of produce from a home garden versus a commercial farm?

←

It depends on how you garden and where your garden is located. In traditional row gardening with overhead watering in a semi-arid climate, like North Dakota where I grew up, I would say that gardening is quite inefficient. However, doing something like the square-foot gardening with minimal, if any, watering in a wettish climate, like WV where I currently reside, home gardening becomes much more efficient. Square foot gardening claims to reduce watering by as much as 85% (IIRC) given the same climate. Usually it is recommended to water only once per week, and then often only 1 cup of water per sq. ft. Excessive or too frequent watering will actually harm your plants, but people seem compelled to get out the hose every day.

Regarding plants vs. seeds, I agree that going to get plants that have been trucked to a garden center is probably not efficient.

[SundaySous]

Having not read the entire thread I'll go ahead and post any way, (it's a character flaw).

Alton Brown has an interesting take on local sourced food supply found half way down the page here.

He talks about the E. coli outbreak of last September, due to tainted spincach. Speculates that it could of possibly been identified earlier if our food wasn't produced by centralized industrial concerns.

He talks about people in 21 states the CDC says people in 26 states were infected. The FDA traced the outbreak to one field in California. Alton's argument seems to be if the food was local sourced the outbreak would of been easier to catch. Possibly the bacteria may not of even grown to harmful levels due to shipping.

He also mentions the US Government telling people to eat no spinach while all this was going on. Mind you this was one field, everybody that grew spinach had to take the hit.

I'm pretty much up in the air on this one. When I saw this on Alton's site I thought of you guys. I suppose I should read this thread now.

[SundaySous]

Some of the economies of scale in the industrial food system are propped up by subsidies; this number does not appear at the bottom of your grocery receipt but you are nonetheless paying for it.

Another factor is diversification versus centralization.  This summer's spinach situation was unfortunate and, while the same kind of thing can happen in a more localized system, it affects fewer people/markets, is faster and easier to trace to the source and doesn't result in the destruction of the vast amount of crop as it did in the Salinas Valley.

Not to take away from any of the points above.  Just think there are multiple factors to be considered and these two are important IMHO.

Edited to remove a superfluous word.

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Let this be a lesson to me. The tenth damn post, that's all I had to read. And did I? No I just went ahead and posted willy nilly. OK if you need me I'll be reading the rest of the thread.

[Jensen]

Something I read recently led me to ponder the spread of the concept of "food miles" and localvore-osity.

My thoughts were that the localvore movement is really kind of a grass-roots one. I also believe it will be (if it hasn't already) taking the food corps a little by surprise.

Had an interesting conversation with my brother-in-law yesterday about an experience he had with food miles. He and a friend had an opportunity to participate in a Coors Light focus group. As he said, while not by any stretch of the imagination was he fond of Coors Light, it was an opportunity to get paid $85 to hopefully drink free beer.

At any rate, when the CL guy told him that people in the west were far more likely to go for a microbrew than a big brewery product, BIL told him about a neighbourhood party they'd had. Five families from their cul-de-sac had got together for a potluck bbq. The only requirement for the meal was that everything, beer and wine included, had to have been produced within 25 miles.

This was not a hard task nor was it something anyone thought was "out there" but it was something that absolutely astounded the CL guy. Again, this took place a year ago and the BIL has never read anything on "food miles" (in fact, I mailed him my copy of 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' yesterday after our phone call).

If that's what's happening in somewhere like Victoria, who needs the illumanati? And a movement that begins as a groundswell just seems more likely to succeed.

[Busboy]

Interesting bit in The New York Times.

But now comes a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, who have started asking provocative questions about the carbon footprint of food. Those questions threaten to undermine some of the feel-good locavore story line, not to mention my weekend forays for produce.....

The distance that food travels from farm to plate is certainly important, he says, but so is how food is packaged, how it is grown, how it is processed and how it is transported to market.

Consider strawberries. If mass producers of strawberries ship their product to Chicago by truck, the fuel cost of transporting each carton of strawberries is relatively small, since it is tucked into the back along with thousands of others.

But if a farmer sells his strawberries at local farmers’ markets in California, he ferries a much smaller amount by pickup truck to each individual market. Which one is better for the environment...?

It gets stickier. If a low-carbon diet is your goal, Mr. Tomich suggests, it may be more effective to change your diet than to focus on eating local. After all, a plant-based diet tends to have a much smaller carbon footprint than a diet that includes meat.

[C. sapidus]

A recent study found that food transportation (“food miles”) causes a relatively small fraction of food-related greenhouse gas emissions (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2008, 42, 3508-3513).

Summary here (clicky)

Abstract and article download here (clicky)

. . . transportation creates only 11% of the 8.1 metric tons (t) of greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) that an average U.S. household generates annually as a result of food consumption. The agricultural and industrial practices that go into growing and harvesting food are responsible for most (83%) of its greenhouse gas emissions.

Methane in cow burps and nitrous oxide from manure decomposition seem to be the main culprits.

"There is more [total] greenhouse gas impact from methane and nitrous oxide than from all the CO2 in the supply chain," Weber says. In large part, he adds, this is because N2O and CH4 emission in the production of red meat "blows away CO2”

Eating more plants, less beef, and less dairy reduces greenhouse gas emissions far more effectively than eating locally. Of course, people may choose to eat locally for legitimate reasons unrelated to reducing their “carbon footprint”.

[Shalmanese]

Also from the same article:

Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%

Roughly 2/3rds of the transportation carboon footprint of your food is getting it from the store to your house. This is roughly consistent with the calculations at the beginning of the thread.

This is not some obscure, esoteric knowledge. Roughly 20 minutes worth of number crunching would show the figures in stark relief. That food miles have dominated the public discourse so comprehensively for so long shows a disturbingly low level of engagement with facts.

[rancho_gordo]

There are countless reasons to support local food beyond a carbon footprint. But if you're buying the grapefruit from Israel and the grapefruit from California from the same store, you're still transporting it home. Coming from Israel adds 4%? Great. I just saved 4 percent by buying local.

Plus:

* It tastes better because it was picked when ripe as opposed to picked when best for shipping.

* The grapefruit grove is producing food in my area, stopping suburban sprawl

* It helps my local economy by producing something, maybe even exporting

* It supports a local food tradition

* For national security reasons, it makes sense to produce our own food, especially since we can so easily, rather than depend on another country to produce it for us.

And do you think the raising gas prices are going to affect things? Me, too!

I used grapefruit as an example. It could be most anything fresh.

[slkinsey]

I agree with most of the things you're saying. However, I should point out that it's a whole lot easier to say those things when you live in Napa. For someone like me, in NYC, there is simply no such thing as a local grapefruit. I understand that your example is for "anything fresh" -- but it's a simple fact that a huge percentage of Americans live in areas of the country where their diet would be severely restricted for large portions of the year by eating strictly locally. So, for us, the question is whether there is a meaningful difference, carbon-footprint wise, between a grapefruit from Israel and a grapefruit from California. I don't know for sure what the answer is, but depending on transportation routes and methods, it may be that the grapefruit from Israel has a smaller footprint. What is not a realistic option is for people in First World countries who live more than X miles away from citrus production to simply never eat citrus fruit.

[rancho_gordo]

Don't you have the Greenmarket system?

What is this Hudson Valley I keep hearing about?

I'm not sure the last time you were in Napa, but there is a thriving Applebee's that made headlines when it opened. We have seasonal farmers markets that don't go all year.

As I said, I pulled citrus out of a hat.

But why not get citrus from Florida or Calif for all the reasons I mentioned? Why have another country grow our food?

I think I know.

But change it to chard or carrots.

[slkinsey]

I agree that you're correct with respect to chard and carrots for us here in NYC. However, there are certain things (and citrus fruits are one of them) that simply do not grow here, and one must consider that the growing cycle here for most produce is only around 6 months of the year. So, for many foods and in many months, it's a choice between either buying non-local foods, or doing without. And if one makes the choice to do without, the selection can become quite narrow.

It's also a fact that California has the longest growing season of any major agricultural area in the United States, and that a very large percentage of the fruits and vegetables grown in the United States is grown in California. Some common fruits and vegetables are, for all intents and purposes, exclusively grown in California. This is why it's easier to be a vehement locavore in California than Minnesota.

Here is what I found most interesting about the article:

Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than "buying local." Shifting less than one day per week's worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.

The emphasis is mine. But I think it's a good point. If I eat non-local Rancho Gordo beans once a week in place of the steak or cheese I might ordinarily have eaten, I've reduced my food-based carbon footprint more than I would have if I bought locally-grown food all year long.

Now, it just so happens that I think there are plenty of good reasons to buy locally-grown foods when they are available -- and I do. You outlined several good reasons. For me, certainly the facts that quality is better, and that I get to support local farmers, tradition and diversity are compelling reasons. "Food miles" as they relate to greenhouse gas emissions is not a compelling reason, because there are better ways I can reduce my food-based GHG emissions without giving up things like artichokes and citrus fruit.

Edited June 10, 2008 by slkinsey (log)

[Mallet]

[...]

The emphasis is mine.  But I think it's a good point.  If I eat non-local Rancho Gordo beans once a week in place of the steak or cheese I might ordinarily have eaten, I've reduced my food-based carbon footprint less than I would have if I bought locally-grown food all year long.

Now, it just so happens that I think there are plenty of good reasons to buy locally-grown foods when they are available -- and I do.  You outlined several good reasons.  For me, certainly the facts that quality is better, and that I get to support local farmers, tradition and diversity are compelling reasons.  "Food miles" as they relate to greenhouse gas emissions is not a compelling reason, because there are better ways I can reduce my food-based GHG emissions without giving up things like artichokes and citrus fruit.

←

I assume you meant more ?

[slkinsey]

Already fixed.

Lest my remarks be misinterpreted, I don't think that eating local foods, where possible, is a crock. I just think that the "food miles" incentive for doing so is a crock.

[Mallet]

Although I agree with most of what is said above, one thing to keep in mind is that "food-miles" as narrowly defined above (in the article C. sapidus posted) is likely to be correlated with other beneficial practices, which may in fact significantly reduce greenhouse gas impact.

A simple, but hopefully not trivial example, red meat. From the article:

Thus, the total supply chain of food contains around four times the “food-miles” of just final delivery. To put these figures into perspective, when combined with the fact that the average household consumes around 5 kg of food per day (29), average final delivery of food is 1640 km (1020 mi), and the total supply chain requires movement of 6760 km (4200 mi).

But I'm not driving to the farmer's market to buy feedlot cattle (actually, I walk to the Farmer's Market but we'll set that aside for the moment ). I buy grass-fed beef which is raised and slaughtered locally, which means much of the rest of the supply chain (transporting grain, cattle etc.. ) is also shortened. Moving the feed to the cattle is a nontrivial cost which is totally eliminated in this example. Since it's grass fed, inputs of nitrogen etc.. are probably also greatly lowered relative to your average feedlot steer, and as the article states

A majority of food’s climate impact is due to non-CO2 greenhouse gases. Nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, mainly due to nitrogen fertilizer application, other soil management techniques, and manure management, are prevalent in all food groups but especially in animal-based groups due to the inefficient transformation of plant energy into animal-based energy. Methane (CH4) emissions are mainly due to enteric fermentation in ruminant animals (cattle, sheep, goats) and manure management, and are thus concentrated in the red meat and dairy categories.

Although I haven't done a comprehensive search, it appears that grass-fed beef can produce %40 less greenhouse emissions than grain-fed, including methane (link).

I would guess that often, these benefits can stack up and thus an attack solely on the "food miles" part of "food-miles" (I know... ) can miss the other benefits of eating locally, even if we insist on only measuring the environmental impact.

Edited June 10, 2008 by Mallet (log)

[slkinsey]

That's what I'm saying. There can be plenty of benefits to eating locally, but food miles seems to be a silly justification. It's also possible that, even accounting for all the benefits of your locally-raised grass-fed beef, that you would to better for the environment by giving up any kind of beef alltogether but continuing to eat non-local citrus fruits.