Think Global, Eat Local

Posted on October 8th, 2011 by Stephen Hardy | Print

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I love it when someone makes me think. I also love it when someone puts their money where their
mouth is to live their principles. I love it even more when those principles make me look at the way I
live and challenges me to be a better person or be more accountable for my life. Such was the case
after I ate at the award winning Locavore restaurant at Stirling in the picturesque Adelaide Hills
recently.

Im sure youve heard the phrase:

If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.

While we all care about health and the environment, caught up in our daily lives its often too hard
to think about how to become part of the solution. The children are fighting and late for school; the
babys just upended his porridge bowl on his head again and the dogs been sick on the carpet. So
how do you find time to make the shift and become part of the solution with so much on your plate?
And what happens when you arent even aware you are part of the problem? So what can you do
and what was it about my meal at the Locavore restaurant that got me thinking? Before I can answer
these questions we need some background.

Locavore is a new word. While the Oxford American Dictionary named it Word Of The Year in
2007(1), most people wont know what it means. While a herbivore eats plants and a carnivore eats
meat, a locavore eats food grown locally, within their geographic region. Particularly, foods
produced within a 160 km (100 mile) radius.

Ive been a supporter of eating locally for years. I eat fruit and vegetables in season, grow my own,
frequent farmers markets, community collectives and buy local produce whenever I can.

So why eat local? First up, it should be fresher. In season food picked yesterday from across the
street is going to be fresher than food picked weeks or months ago, kept in refrigerated cold stores
and shipped across the globe. Buying local also supports local jobs and keeps money in the
community. And theres another consideration: Foods grown locally dont have to travel as far and
so have a lower potential environmental impact. These transportation costs and their associated
environmental impact are seldom discussed and certainly, never mentioned either on the packaging
or the labelling in the store. Its all about Food Miles. Food Miles are a measure of how far food
travels from where it is produced to where it is eaten. Well come back to them

How you go about being a locavore depends on where you live. If you are snow bound for 6 months,
then what can be grown and what you can source around you will be quite different from someone
living in a temperate or tropical region. Nevertheless, the concept has gained widespread appeal.
For example, the Noma restaurant in Copenhagen embraces the locavore ideas and principles and
sources much of its produce from the local countryside. Earlier this year it was voted the worlds
best restaurant for the second year in a row at the annual S. Pellegrino awards run by Restaurant
magazine (2). A quick search of the Internet will yield many well-regarded restaurants around the
globe embracing the locavore concept.

So what does it take to be a locavore? Being a locavore means eating things not just grown locally
but also suited to the local conditions. Lets look at the can be grown locally part first. If you are
going to eat things grown locally, then it is important to know the local soils have a good balance of
essential minerals. If the soil in a particular region is naturally deficient in selenium or zinc for
example, then foods grown on that soil will also be potentially deficient in selenium or zinc. And if
the selenium or zinc isnt in the food, it wont get into you! It is also important to grow foods suited
to the local climate. You wouldnt grow rice in a low rainfall area for example, or lamb in the north of
Scotland, where the barns have to be heated in winter. The last thing about being a locavore is to
get over being a locavore! If you like coffee for example and live where I do, (Adelaide, South
Australia), then its going to be a very long time between drinks because there arent a lot of coffee
plantations within a 160 km (100 mile) radius of Adelaide. So if you cant get everything you need
from within 160 km (100 miles), you can at least source as much as you can nearby. And for the
things not produced locally, you buy from sources as close to you as you can. In my case, this would
be coffee from other parts of Australia or New Guinea, rather than coffee from Columbia or
Ethiopia. So the simplest way of getting your head around the locavore concept is to eat locally
grown foods in season.

So while the logic and ethics of eating local looks sound, does it really make that much difference
from an environmental standpoint? Well after speaking with Chris March and Nathan Crudden, the
owners and founders of the Locavore restaurant in Stirling, I realised it had the potential to make a
huge difference! In keeping with the Locavore name, wherever possible everything they serve in the
restaurant is grown or produced within a 160 km (100 mile) radius. Since opening the doors in
October 2007, the Locavore estimates their within 160 km (100 mile) produce sourcing policy has
saved over 300,000,000 Food Kilometres (186,410,000 Food Miles). These numbers staggered me, as
its twice the distance from the Earth to the Sun! As an insatiably curious scientist, I had to look into
it.

I found some answers in the Food Miles in Australia report from the Centre for Education &
Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES) (3). The study looked at the distance travelled by the
items found in a typical Melbourne shopping basket. The report estimated the total distance
travelled by the 29 common foodstuffs in their average shopping basket was over 70,000 km (43,500
miles), or nearly twice round the globe! And this was representative of the shopping for a week!
Multiply this week after week and it comes to an estimated 3,640,000 km (2,261,800 miles) per
household per year! Thats 10 times the distance from the Earth to the moon just to get the food
from where it was produced to your plate. It doesnt take into account the energy used for
refrigeration during storage and transport or the energy used to produce the food in the first place.

Sure, massive ships, trains and trucks transport vast quantities of food over large distances very
efficiently. But 70,000 km (43,500 miles) or twice round the globe for a weeks worth of groceries?
These numbers are mind-boggling. So lets see if we can put them in terms we can get our heads
around. How far is 70,000 km (43,500 miles) in terms of our everyday experiences, our day-to-day
lives? Well for starters, its about as far as I drive in 5 years! Lets stay with driving for the sake of this
exercise, because its something we all do. And lets pretend the massive ships, trains and trucks
wont be bringing the food to me this week and I have to drive the 70,000 km (43,500 miles) to
collect all the food in my average Melbourne shopping basket. Well if I could travel at 100 km/hour
(62 mph), the legal speed limit in most Australian states, it would take me 700 hours of continuous
driving to cover 70,000 km. Thats over 29 days! So if the estimates in the Food Miles in Australia
report are correct, Id have to drive my car non-stop for a month to collect a weeks worth of food!
And how much petrol or gasoline would I use? At 8.56 litres of fuel per 100 km (33 miles per gallon),
my car travelling 70,000 km would use 8,178 litres (2,160 US gallons) of fuel! And if we assume my
basket of food contains 25 kg (55 pounds) of food and everything I need for all the meals I prepare
during the week, each of the 21 meals I eat that week would have used nearly 390 litres (103 US
gallons) of petrol or gasoline to get to my plate! Thats about 5 times my body weight of gasoline for
every meal of around 1 kg (2.2 pounds)! This isnt mind-boggling any more. Its mind-blowing!

The above calculations are not intended to be scientifically accurate or valid. They are simply an
attempt to make the findings and implications of the Food Miles in Australia report understandable,
to put them in terms of our day-to-day experience. In the real world, economies of scale come into
effect. Even so, running the numbers on how far food is transported and the environmental costs
involved is a very scary exercise because thats where the twice round the globe, 70,000 km (43,500
miles) travelled per basket per week figure came from! For precise estimates of the energy involved
in transporting our food and the assumptions and calculations used to generate them, consult the
Food Miles in Australia report (3).

Given the size of the problem, theres certainly a lot of scope to become part of the solution! So
what to do? Well if you want to reduce your environmental impact with minimal effort then think
about becoming a locavore where you can. Its very easy to do and makes sense for a host of social,
health and environmental reasons. It also makes sense to get behind those who are supporting the
initiative. If you are interested in learning more about the eat local / Food Miles debate, have a look
at the references in the Food Miles in Australia report (3).

So I applaud the owners and staff of the Locavore restaurant in Stirling for making me think, living
their principles and for being the inspiration for this blog (4). My challenge to you is to embrace the
Eat Local or 100 Mile Diet philosophy. The 100 Mile Diet is a simple way to make a difference
every day in a host of ways and move from being part of the problem to becoming part of the
solution. And youll likely have fun doing it and eat more healthily in the process! So grow your own,
swop food with your friends and neighbours, join a community growers collective, find a local
farmers market or a store specialising in local produce and get out there and find the foods and
food producers near you. They will be there and if your experience is similar to mine, you may be in
for a very pleasant and tasty surprise. Bon Appetit!

Until next time, stay happy and healthy

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Many regions have declared September Local Food Month. Its not a national celebration yet, but
lets hope it doesnt become one. Every month should be local food month, and heres why

When I was a kid, it was considered a very special thing that my Uncle Kane shipped us a solitary,
brown coconut from Hawaii every year. And my Aunt and Uncle in Florida would send us a crate of
grapefruit every winter too because it was simply too rare or too expensive in the stores.

Now you can find coconuts and grapefruit readily stocked in any health food store, year-round. In
fact, when we shop at the grocery store today, we take for granted that there will be strawberries or
perfect tomatoesin the middle of winter.

In the space of a single generation, weve become accustomed to eating food thats never grown
roots in local soil. In fact, most produce grown in the United States travels an average of 1,500
miles before it gets sold.

This must change if we hope to have the resources necessary to feed our growing numbers in the
future.

Good Economics in Difficult Times

Eating local has enormous economic

benefits for communities. Just spend a weekend morning at the farmers market and that conclusion
seems obvious.

After all, you hand your money directly to the farmer who grew your food, rather than passing it
along a chain of middlemen who take .85 cents out of every dollar you spend at the
supermarket. (Thats right, at the supermarket, the farmer makes 15% or less on what they grew!)

In contrast, the economic logic of the industrial food system de-emphasizes place: Different regions
specialize in growing different crops, thereby developing production efficiencies that enable them to
offer their products at a lower price. Money flows freely among communities, and everyone gets a
more varied diet for less money, right?

The trouble is, thats not all thats happening.

Over the past decade, Ken Meter, president of the Minneapolis-based Crossroads Resource Center,
has documented the way the current food system drains money and vitality from farming
communities throughout the United States.

His study found that farmers in southeastern Minnesota sold an average of $912 million worth of
farm commodities every year, but they spent $996 million on seeds, fertilizers, animal feed,
pesticides and imported food from out of state!

All of the money that the region earned from farming was drained right back out of the community
by the food system itself!

Similar patterns are found in Iowa, Arizona, Washington and other states around the nation.

According to a report on local food by Sarah DeWeerdt of World Watch Institute, producing local
food could reverse this economic drain. If those people in southeastern Minnesota bought just 15
percent of their food from local sources, it would generate two-thirds as much income as all the
regions farmers receive from subsidies.

And if the population in and around Seattle, Washington bought 20 percent of their food from local
providers, it would inject an extra billion dollars each year into the local economy.

The true cost of industrial food is unaffordable.

Every time money changes hands within a community, it boosts the communitys overall income
and level of economic activity, and fuels the creation of jobs, DeWeerdt explains. The more times
money changes hands within the community before heading elsewhere, the better off the
community is. And spending money at a locally-owned business has a greater multiplier effect,
because locally owned businesses are more likely to respend their dollars locally.

To date, she reports, no community has actually made a sharp enough shift to realize these
economic benefits. Still, government officials appear willing to explore how local food can help
bolster rural economies.

Under President Obama, $1.24 billion in USDA funds have been allocated over the past three years
to help build local food systems, including supporting new farmers markets, mobile slaughterhouses,
community kitchens, food and cooking classes, and local food businesses.

This is a good start. The rest is up to us.

If the proverbial sh*t hit the fan, if there was a natural disaster or major economic upheaval, how
would you and your community fare? How strong is your local foodshed? What can you do to
support and increase the number of local gardeners, homesteaders, farmers and food producers in
your region?

Getting the Oil Off Your Plate

 Credit: Terry Eggers

Besides supporting local economies, there is another important reason to buy local food: American
food is simply dripping in oil.

Trucking, shipping and flying in food from around the country and the globe takes a major toll on the
environment and on public health.

Take grapes, for example. Every year, nearly 270 million pounds of grapes arrive in California, most
of them shipped from Chile to the Port of Los Angeles.

Their 5,900 mile journey in cargo ships and trucks releases 7,000 tons of global warming pollution
each year, and enough air pollution to cause dozens of asthma attacks and hundreds of missed
school days in California.

On average, Americans consume about 400 gallons of oil per year per person for agriculture, which
is a close second to our car usage.

Tractors, combines, harvesters, sprayers, tillers and other equipment all use petroleum, but
machines are not the real gas-guzzlers on the farm. That dubious honor belongs to synthetic
fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides that are made from oil and natural gas, which are also used in
their manufacturing.

More than a quarter of all farming energy goes into synthetic fertilizers. (Organic farms, which use
no synthetic chemicals, use significantly less oil.)

But getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of the total oil used for our food. The
lions share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your dinner table. Most produce in the
U.S.whether organically or chemically-farmedis shipped an average of 1500 miles before being
sold. Those distances are substantially longer when we import produce from Mexico, Asia, Canada,
South America, and other places.

In addition to direct transport, other oil-guzzling steps include processing, packaging, warehousing
and refrigeration. Energy calories consumed by production, packaging and shipping far outweigh the
energy calories we receive from food. In fact, it is estimated that one can of soda requires 30 calories
of energy for each empty, nutritionally-bankrupt calorie of beverage in the can.
30 calories in to get just 1 measly calorie out? This is not just unsustainable: It is a recipe for
planetary disaster!

We can only afford to eat this way because we subsidize large scale, industrial farming with
government handouts and artificially cheap energy. (All payed for by you, taxpayer.) We also
externalize and hide the environmental costs of our wasteful food system, transferring our debt to
skyrocketing healthcare and environmental remediation costsagain, paid for by you and me, of
course.

The true cost of industrial food is unaffordable.

(See 13 Ways to Create a Sustainable Food System for some solutions to this problem.)

Cheap oil will not last forever though. World oil production has already peaked, and while demand
for oil continues to grow, easily attained supply will continue to dwindle within the next 20 years,
sending the price of energy through the roof.

We might then be forced to use energy efficient agricultural methods, like smaller-scale organic
agriculture, Permaculture, and local production wherever possible.

Or we could just start now.

How to Become a Locavore

People who value local as their primary food criterion are sometimes referred to as locavores. The
term locavore was coined by Jessica Prentice for World Environment Day 2005 to describe and
promote the practice of eating a diet consisting of food harvested from within a 100-150 mile radius
of your home.

One easy way to start eating more local food is to choose one food group to focus on. Vegetables
are often a good place to start. Produce also offers a good introduction to eating seasonally, and to
what grows in your part of the country, and when.

This great local food finder will get you started with a list of all the fruits and vegetables that are in
season for your region.

Once youve got the hang of local produce, then try seeking out sources for local, pasture-raised
meat, eggs or dairy. Finally, see if you can find grains locally, or grow a pancake patch in your
backyard garden.

You can support your local food economy by shopping at the farm market, subscribing to a CSA,
visiting a U-Pick farm or farm stand, or by purchasing local produce at your supermarket (though
remember the supermarket chain takes .85 cents of every dollar, keeping only .15 cents in the
community.)

And lets not forget growing your own, and sharing, bartering or selling the excess!

Naturally, theres money to be made off of local products, so big businesses have been getting into
the game. As you learn to eat locally and seasonally, youll want to beware of
localwashing. Localwashing is a variation on greenwashing, wherein businesses claim to be local to
entice you to buy their products, when actually they are not.

Use a little common sense: if the food you are buying comes from a corporation, franchise or chain
store with headquarters located far away (like Walmart, Hellmanns, Starbucks or Frito Lay), their
products are certainly not local, and they are draining money from your community.

The Good News

The way we eat has an enormous impact on the health of the planet. Cheap energy and agricultural
subsidies facilitate a type of industrial farming that is destroying our soils, air and water, weakening
our communities, bankrupting small family farmers, and concentrating wealth and power into a few
hands.

It is also threatening the security of our food systems, as demonstrated by the continued E. coli,
GMO-contamination, Superbugs, and other health scares that seem to happen with increasing
frequency these days.

But by choosing to eat seasonal, local and organic or pasture-raised produce, eggs, dairy, fish and
meat, we can curb global warming and pollution, avoid toxic pesticides, support local farmers and
enjoy fresh, tasty food. And there is no time better than Local Food Month to begin changing the
way we eat.

The good news is that if every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week composed entirely of locally and
organically raised produce and grass-fed meats, eggs or dairy, we could reduce our countrys oil
consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oilevery week.

And by eating local, we would also be helping to create thriving local businesses, economically
vibrant, resilient and self-reliant communities, and better health and nutrition for our families.

What more could you want?

Max Schulte / Special to msnbc.com

Members of Grace Episcopal Church in Syracuse, N.Y., work on a community garden that will aim to
give locally grown food to those in need.

By Allison Linn Senior writer

msnbc.com

updated 6/10/2008 8:55:21 AM ET 2008-06-10T12:55:21

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When Katherine Gray takes her kids to the grocery store, they can pick out as many apples and pears
as their hearts desire. But bananas? Pineapples? Mangoes? Sorry kids, if they werent grown within
100 miles of Grays house in Portland, Ore., chances are they wont make it into the grocery cart.

For years, the idea of eating only food grown locally and in season was reserved for upscale chefs
like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., or serious hippies living off the grid, while the
rest of us didnt think twice about gulping down blueberries from Chile or avocadoes from Mexico.

Recently, however, a small but devoted number of Americans have started to think a lot more about
the origin of the food going into their grocery cart. Worried about the environmental impact of
shipping food hundreds of miles, plus the dwindling fate of local farmers and obsessed with the
idea of eating really good food these extreme eaters try to only buy food that is grown within a
100-mile radius of their own home.

When we first started talking about it, at the beginning, people thought we were a little bit off our
rockers, and now its become part of this mainstream discussion, says Jennifer Maiser, one of a
group of San Francisco locavores who pioneered an effort to eat locally a few years ago.

Around the same time, a couple in Vancouver, British Columbia, became alarmed after hearing
about a study by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, which showed that the average
distance a piece of produce travels from U.S. farms to households in the upper Midwest is 1,500
miles.

They made the decision to spend a year trying to live only on food grown within 100 miles of their
Canada home.

An engaging book about their effort, Plenty, spawned a devoted international following, and now
co-author Alisa Smith says activities related to eating locally, such as speaking engagements, are
pretty much a full-time job. The fact that eating locally has touched such a nerve still surprises her.

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When we first started writing it, it was a personal experiment for us, she says. But we started to
hear from people in England, France, Australia, and it just took off from there.

The movement has grown popular enough to spawn serious research into how much eating locally
could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with at least one researcher arguing that, other benefits
aside, it may not be the environmental savior some are hoping for.

Gray, who is 34 and runs her own business in addition to raising two small children, doesnt consider
herself a gourmet chef, but she does like to eat healthy. About two years ago, she started reading
more about industrialized food production, and it got her thinking about what her family could do to
make a difference. Then she came across the book Plenty and found her solution.

I like a plan, she says.

Soon, the family was eating a lot more eggs and potatoes and trying vegetables they had never
heard of, including one that looked like a white carrot and tasted, inexplicably, like an oyster. They
became regulars at the farmers market and the natural food store, and Gray purchased some new
cookbooks. Now she says about 80 percent of the fresh food they eat is grown locally.

I didnt feel like wed be able to do it, and then I realized how, when you start looking, there are a
lot of resources out there, she says.

Nevertheless, she says she remains an anomaly even in liberal-minded Portland: I still am the freaky
one here.
The Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows would not seem like an obvious candidate for the eating local
movement. Growing up, she didnt eat many vegetables and those that were on the table were
always cooked within an inch of their lives.

I grew up in an African-American household, she says. Celery root was not part of our tradition.

Her husband also did not come to the idea naturally: a native of the Bahamas, he considered
vegetables to be more of a plate decoration than an actual part of the meal.

But Baskerville-Burrows, 41, had always liked to cook, and she started shopping at farmers markets
beginning around 1999. A few years later, she started reading books including Fast Food Nation,
which includes segments about the farm practices that go into mass-produced food. It prompted a
closer look at how she could find healthier and tastier food.

I started really looking at my diet, says Baskerville-Burrows, who is an Episcopal priest.

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These days, Baskerville-Burrows says she buys about 85 percent of her food from producers in the
Syracuse, N.Y., area, where she lives. She also grows tomatoes, herbs and other vegetables at home,
and this year she worked with church members to plant a garden on church grounds that they hope
will eventually supply a local food pantry with fresh produce.

Max Schulte / Special to msnbc.com

Members of Grace Episcopal Church in Syracuse, N.Y., work on a community garden that will aim to
give locally grown food to those in need.

Among locavore proponents, one popular pastime is the eat local challenge, in which participants
try, usually for one month, to eat only food that comes from within their community. The rest of the
year, many locavores are more realistic about the limits of their devotion.

Maiser drinks coffee and has a soft spot for Greek yogurt and Italian pasta. Grays family eats salsa
and pesto and pasta, even though she suspects that some of the ingredients have traveled
remarkably long distances. Even Smith has allowed things such as rice and olive oil into her home
since ending the year of eating locally chronicled in Plenty.

But that doesnt mean that a locavores kitchen looks anything like most Americans. In order to eat
locally through the winter without getting scurvy or facing a family revolt, locavores are forced to
take on domestic efforts that most families havent tackled for generations. Grays extra freezer is
stuffed with frozen summer foods plus half a cow she purchased from a local rancher, and she has
aspirations to learn more about canning.

Baskerville-Burrows has a root cellar to keep food fresh through the winter. She freezes fresh
produce and has been canning strawberries and tomatoes since 2006. Like a lot of people trying to
learn long-forgotten food preservation skills, she admits she has approached it with a bit of
trepidation.

I cant think of anything thats gone horribly awry. Ill tell you, though, when I opened up my first jar
of tomato sauce, I went to the computer and looked up botulism, she says.

Smith, the Plenty author, recalls frantic calls to her mother and grandmother as she tried to figure
out how to do things like make jam.

One piece of advice she has to offer: Get started early in the day, because it takes longer than you
might think.

The same could be said for eating locally in general, since doing so often involves spending more
time tracking down food and finding ways to cook things you might normally buy ready-made, like
bread. Not surprisingly, in most communities its hard to find processed food that is made
exclusively from local ingredients.

Also, expect to see a spike in your food bill.

I am keenly aware that my grocery budget it gives me heart attacks and so I know that there
are a lot of people that cant do that, Gray says.

Baskerville-Burrows believes the extra cost is worth the tradeoffs, and she also feels she is paying a
fair price for foods that keep local farmers in business.

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Id rather spend my money putting good stuff in my body than worrying about whats on it, she
says.

Locavores also report other, perhaps unexpected, benefits to eating food produced near their
homes. Maiser said it gives you a better understanding not just of where food comes from, but when
it is freshest.

I would say the normal American who goes to Safeway or something like that doesnt really have a
good idea of when asparagus is in season, she says.

Some find themselves making healthier eating choices because eating locally tends to mean eating
more fruits and vegetables, rather than processed foods. Others, like Gray, arent sure theyve made
their diet any healthier, but they like the other benefits.

For example, once youve eaten food that was just picked from the farm, many say its hard to go
back to the refrigerated, shipped variety. Baskerville-Burrows hated tomatoes until she had some
fresh ones from a produce market in Berkeley, Calif., and realized what they really taste like.

Still, people who are trying to eat locally concede that it is easier if you live in an area, like San
Francisco, where a wide variety of food is grown nearby and there are like-minded people. Also, the
added time and money can make it harder for people who are juggling family and work
responsibilities.

As a single person in San Francisco, I feel like I cant say to someone with a family, this is something
that is worth it to do or that you should do, Maiser says. I definitely know many (families) who are
doing it, but I would say its definitely more something that single people are doing.

There are plenty of good reasons to eat locally grown food, says Christopher Weber, assistant
research professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. But, he
argues in a recent research paper, the most commonly cited reason reducing the environmental
impact of transporting food hundreds of miles may not be all its cracked up to be.

Weber and co-author H. Scott Matthews concluded that transportation only accounts for 11 percent
of the environmentally destructive greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing food. He
says families could more drastically, and perhaps more easily, reduce their carbon footprint by
cutting back on or eliminating the red meat and dairy in their diets. Thats because those foods take
an inordinate amount of resources to produce compared with fruits, vegetables, eggs, chicken and
fish.

But once you start parsing food choices more closely, it gets more complicated. For example, you
could reduce your carbon footprint and still eat red meat by choosing grass-fed beef from a local
rancher, because it takes a lot more energy to produce grain for conventionally raised cattle. On the
other hand, eating fish is generally the better environmental choice for protein, but not if its not
being flown in from some exotic locale.

Also, eating locally by actually growing your own food is a better environmental choice than buying
food, for a variety of reasons. But, he says, just buying organic food from anywhere in the country
does not do much to help reduce the threat of global warming, although some would argue there
are other environmental benefits.

Finally, for a person like Weber, who describes himself as somewhere between vegetarian and
vegan, eating locally could have a big proportional impact since he has already cut back on meat
and dairy consumption.

Weber worries that hes been misinterpreted.

Were not trying to say that eating local is bad, he says. Eating local is definitely good, and theres
a lot of good reasons to do it.

It just may not save the planet.

AGRICULTURE

How Green is Local Food?

BY RENEE CHO|SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Comments
Local food proponents often claim that food grown close to home helps prevent global warming
because it requires less fossil fuels to transport, generating fewer greenhouse gas emissions than
conventionally produced food. But just how green is local food?

While there is no official definition of local food, the 2008 Farm Act defined a locally or regionally
produced agricultural food product as one that travels less than 400 miles from its origin, or within
the state in which it is produced. Many people consider food produced within a 100-mile radius as
local. Local food is sold at farmers markets, roadside stands, U-pick operations, through community
supported agriculture, Farm to School programs, and food hubs that distribute food to restaurants,
hotels, etc.

In the United States, conventionally produced foods are often said to travel 1,500 miles from farm to
plate. Rich Pirog, senior associate director of the C.S. Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems,
found that conventional food distribution was responsible for 5 to 17 times more CO2 than local and
regionally produced food.

But the impacts of food on climate depend not only on the distance it travels but how, and more
importantly, on what happens before it ever gets delivered.

A 2008 study examined life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of food production as compared to food
miles, how far food travels to market. The study, which analyzed the production, transportation and
distribution of food in the United States, found that transportation accounts for only 11 percent of
foods greenhouse gas emissions, with the final delivery segment from producer to market
responsible for a mere 4 percent. Moreover, transportation related emissions vary according to how
food is transported; for example, rail and water transport are much more energy efficient than air or
truck transport.
Cornfields. Photo credit: artescienza

The production of food accounts for 83 percent of emissions, and can vary according to if food is
grown in heavily fertilized fields with extensive plowing, or with intensive use of irrigation and
pesticides, etc. The majority of food s climate impact is due to non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions
such as nitrous oxide and methane emissions. Nitrous oxide emissions (298 times more potent as a
greenhouse gas than CO2) arise from nitrogen fertilizer and certain techniques for soil and manure
management. Methane emissions (25 times more potent than CO2) are a result of the digestive
process of ruminants like cows and sheep, and manure management. Meat and dairy production are
also responsible for emissions from the growing of grain to feed the cows. The life cycle study found
that red meat accounts for about 150 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than chicken or fish.

So while buying local food could reduce the average consumers greenhouse gas emissions by 4-5
percent at best, substituting part of one day a weeks worth of calories from red meat and dairy
products with chicken, fish, eggs, or vegetables achieves more greenhouse gas reduction than
switching to a diet based entirely on locally produced food (which would be impossible anyway).
Eating foods that are in season and eating organic and less processed foods can further reduce ones
greenhouse gas emissions.

The local food movement is growing rapidly. The U.S. Department of Agriculturereported a 9.6
percent increase in National Farmers Market Directory listings this year. In 2010, the U.S. had 6,132
farmers markets; today it has 7,864.

Small and local farms provide numerous economic, social and environmental benefits beyond fewer
food miles.
The farmers market at Columbia University.

Local food keeps local land in production and local money in the community, often costs less than
conventionally produced food, and builds community relations. Decentralized production also
reduces food safety risks, as long-distance food can potentially be contaminated at many points on
its journey to our plates.

Small farms also more readily adopt environmentally friendly practices. They often rebuild crop and
insect diversity, use less pesticides, enrich the soil with cover crops, create border areas for wildlife,
and produce tastier food (since industrial food is bred to withstand long-distance shipping and
mechanical harvesting).

Jennifer G. Phillips, assistant professor at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and formerly a
researcher at the Earth Institutes International Research Institute for Climate and Society, noted
that a key environmental benefit of local food is that it keeps nutrient cycling at the local level, while
conventional agriculture can upset a regions natural nutrient balance. For example, nitrogen and
phosphorus, nutrients plants need to grow, are contained in fertilizer and in agricultural waste.
Phosphorus in fertilized grain grown in the midwest is shipped to the northeast for dairy cow feed,
then the dairy cow manure is applied to fields in the northeast where the excess phosphorus runs off
into streams, lakes and finally the ocean. The runoff can result in eutrophication, a serious form of
water pollution where algae bloom, then die, creating a dead zone where nothing can live. If
nutrients were cycling locally, there would be no excess.

The flock at Gansvoort Farm. Photo credit: Gansvoort Farm.

Phillips, a farmer herself, raises 100 sheep on organically-managed pastures at her 86-
acre Gansvoort Farm in New Yorks Hudson Valley. She was recently forced to sell off her beef cows
because she could not afford to keep them; if she depended solely on the farm for income, she said,
she would either need to become more diversified or scale it up. Scaling up local food production
requires infrastructure such as slaughterhouses, cold storage, processing facilities, mills, distribution,
etc. Before World War II and the advent of the industrial food system, this infrastructure was largely
localized, but today it no longer exists.

Organic and small farmers are making money now mainly because theres no middleman, said
Phillips. But scaling up will change that economic model and likely decrease profits for farmers.
Another danger of scaling up, she said, is that farms will end up looking more like industrial
agriculture. There has to be some optimum point where the farm size is economically viable without
losing its environmental benefits, but no one yet knows where that point is.

Clare Sullivan, environmental research coordinator at the Earth Institutes Tropical Agriculture and
Rural Environment Program, is also a local farmer. She is involved with Feedback Farms, a temporary
local farm on a reclaimed 6500-square-foot lot in Brooklyn, NY.

Photo credit: Feedback Farms

The 2000-square-foot garden produces tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, cucumbers, eggplant, greens,
carrots, beets, radish and kale, and sells 80 percent of its produce locally to restaurants, grocery
stores and at their onsite marketall within 4 to 5 blocks and via deliveries on foot. They eat the
rest themselves. Because the soil is contaminated with heavy metals, the farm had to import soil
from the Hudson Valley, and plants in raised beds and moveable containers.

Feedback Farms offers environmental benefits such as providing habitat for insects (pollinators),
absorbing stormwater runoff, and cycling nutrients through composting. But Sullivan feels its biggest
benefits are socialproviding an educational experience for the community whose members can
participate directly in vegetable production, composting and rainwater harvesting.
When comparing agricultural systems, its important to understand how complex they are and look
at all aspectssocial, environmental and economic, said Sullivan. Unfortunately, there are very
few datasets available to the scientific community yet that look at all of these various aspects and
permit comprehensive comparisons of agriculture systems.

In truth, the question posed by this posts title is impossible to answer definitively because so many
variables are involved. Small and local farms may use pesticides, plow extensively and irrigate
inefficiently. Some may grow in greenhouses heated with fossil fuels. Large farms growing crops
suited to their region may use less energy per product and grow more food on less land. And
adopting strategies such as no-till, more efficient irrigation, integrated pest management, judicious
fertilizer use, better handling of manure and leaving fields fallow could help offset the greenhouse
gas emissions of large farms. The inputs into the food production life cycle also vary according to
variety of fertilizer used, amount of pesticides and herbicides applied, type of farm machinery, mode
of transportation, load sizes, fuel type, trip frequency, storage facilities, food prep, waste, etc.

To make sense of the multitude of variables, the Tropical Agriculture Program and a group of
international scientists have launched Vital Signs. Vital Signs is establishing a system for monitoring
multiple dimensions of agricultural landscapes simultaneously. Monitoring a minimum set of social,
environmental and economic indicators over time will enable farmers, scientists, policy makers and
organizations to compare agricultural systems for sustainability and provide tools to evaluate the
risks and tradeoffs of various aspects of agricultural systems. Although it is being developed for sites
in Africa, the data collection and analysis will be applicable to many different agricultural systems
from organic and small farms to large-scale farms.

We need to finally be able to answer these questions that consumers are asking, said Sullivan.

Is Local Food Better?

author:

Sarah DeWeerdt
Purchase State of the World 2011:
Innovations that Nourish the Planet
to learn more about eating sustainably.

Editor's note: The local-food movement has been gaining momentum in developed countries, and in
many developing countries as well, in recent years; in the United States alone, sales of locally grown
foods, worth about $4 billion in 2002, could reach as much as $7 billion by 2011. Local food's claimed
benefits are driving health- and environment-conscious consumers to seek alternatives to the
industrial agriculture system whose products dominate grocery-store shelves. It is also linked to the
localization efforts of people who believe that rising transport costs and reaction to globalization will
trigger a shortening of economic links and greater reliance on local and regional economies. This
two-part series examines the potential impacts of greater localization of food, beginning with the
environmental effects and then, in our July/August issue, the economic implications.)

In 1993, a Swedish researcher calculated that the ingredients of a typical Swedish breakfast-apple,
bread, butter, cheese, coffee, cream, orange juice, sugar-traveled a distance equal to the
circumference of the Earth before reaching the Scandinavian table. In 2005, a researcher in Iowa
found that the milk, sugar, and strawberries that go into a carton of strawberry yogurt collectively
journeyed 2,211 miles (3,558 kilometers) just to get to the processing plant. As the local-food
movement has come of age, this concept of "food miles" (or "-kilometers")-roughly, the distance
food travels from farm to plate-has come to dominate the discussion, particularly in the United
States, the United Kingdom, and parts of Western Europe.

The concept offers a kind of convenient shorthand for describing a food system that's centralized,
industrialized, and complex almost to the point of absurdity. And, since our food is transported all
those miles in ships, trains, trucks, and planes, attention to food miles also links up with broader
concerns about the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from fossil fuel-based
transport.

In the United States, the most frequently cited statistic is that food travels 1,500 miles on average
from farm to consumer. That figure comes from work led by Rich Pirog, the associate director of the
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University (he is also behind the
strawberry-yogurt calculations referenced above). In 2001, in some of the country's first food-miles
research, Pirog and a group of researchers analyzed the transport of 28 fruits and vegetables to Iowa
markets via local, regional, and conventional food distribution systems. The team calculated that
produce in the conventional system-a national network using semitrailer trucks to haul food to large
grocery stores-traveled an average of 1,518 miles (about 2,400 kilometers). By contrast, locally
sourced food traveled an average of just 44.6 miles (72 kilometers) to Iowa markets.

In light of such contrasts, the admonition to "eat local" just seems like common sense. And indeed,
at the most basic level, fewer transport miles do mean fewer emissions. Pirog's team found that the
conventional food distribution system used 4 to 17 times more fuel and emitted 5 to 17 times more
CO2 than the local and regional (the latter of which roughly meant Iowa-wide) systems. Similarly, a
Canadian study estimated that replacing imported food with equivalent items locally grown in the
Waterloo, Ontario, region would save transport-related emissions equivalent to nearly 50,000 metric
tons of CO2, or the equivalent of taking 16,191 cars off the road.

What's "Local"?

But what exactly is "local food" in the first place? How local is local?

One problem with trying to determine whether local food is greener is that there's no universally
accepted definition of local food. Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, authors of The 100-Mile Diet,
write that they chose this boundary for their experiment in eating locally because "a 100-mile radius
is large enough to reach beyond a big city and small enough to feel truly local. And it rolls off the
tongue more easily than the 160-kilometer diet.'" Sage Van Wing, who coined the term "locavore"
with a friend when she was living in Marin County, California, was inspired to eat local after reading
Coming Home to Eat, a chronicle of author Gary Paul Nabhan's own year-long effort to eat only
foods grown within 250 miles of his Northern Arizona home. She figured that if Nabhan could
accomplish that in the desert, she could do even better in the year-round agricultural cornucopia
that is Northern California, so she decided to limit herself to food from within 100 miles.

There's some evidence that a popular understanding of local food is, at least in some places,
coalescing around this 100-mile limit. A 2008 Leopold Institute survey of consumers throughout the
United States found that two-thirds considered local food to mean food grown within 100 miles.
Still, a variety of other definitions also persist. Sometimes local means food grown within a county,
within a state or province, or even, in the case of some small European nations, within the country.
In the United Kingdom, reports Tara Garnett of the Food Climate Research Network, "on the whole,
organizations supporting local are now less likely to put numbers on things." Meanwhile, rural
sociologist Clare Hinrichs, of Pennsylvania State University, has found that in Iowa local has shifted
from signifying food grown within a county or a neighboring one to food grown anywhere in the
state. For some in the agricultural community, promoting and eating "local Iowa food" is almost a
kind of food patriotism, aimed at counteracting the forces of globalization that have put the state's
family farmers at risk.

All of those are perfectly valid ways of thinking about local. But they don't have all that much to do
with environmental costs and benefits.
Tradeoffs

In any case, warns Pirog, food miles/kilometers don't tell the whole story. "Food miles are a good
measure of how far food has traveled. But they're not a very good measure of the food's
environmental impact."

That impact depends on how the food was transported, not just how far. For example, trains are 10
times more efficient at moving freight, ton for ton, than trucks are. So you could eat potatoes
trucked in from 100 miles away, or potatoes shipped by rail from 1,000 miles away, and the
greenhouse gas emissions associated with their transport from farm to table would be roughly the
same.

The environmental impact of food also depends on how it is grown. Swedish researcher Annika
Carlsson-Kanyama led a study that found it was better, from a greenhouse-gas perspective, for
Swedes to buy Spanish tomatoes than Swedish tomatoes, because the Spanish tomatoes were
grown in open fields while the local ones were grown in fossil-fuel-heated greenhouses.

That seems obvious, but there are subtler issues at play as well. For example, Spain has plenty of the
warmth and sunshine that tomatoes crave, but its main horticultural region is relatively arid and is
likely to become more drought-prone in the future as a result of global climate change. What if
water shortages require Spanish growers to install energy-intensive irrigation systems? And what if
greenhouses in northern Europe were heated with renewable energy?

Perhaps it's inevitable that we consumers gravitate to a focus on food miles-the concept represents
the last step before food arrives on our tables, the part of the agricultural supply chain that's most
visible to us. And indeed, all other things being equal, it's better to purchase something grown
locally than the same thing grown far away. "It is true that if you're comparing exact systems, the
same food grown in the same way, then obviously, yes, the food transported less will have a smaller
carbon footprint," Pirog says.

But a broader, more comprehensive picture of all the tradeoffs in the food system requires tracking
greenhouse gas emissions through all phases of a food's production, transport, and consumption.
And life-cycle analysis (LCA), a research method that provides precisely this "cradle-to-grave"
perspective, reveals that food miles represent a relatively small slice of the greenhouse-gas pie.

In a paper published last year, Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, of Carnegie Mellon
University, wove together data from a variety of U.S. government sources into a comprehensive life-
cycle analysis of the average American diet. According to their calculations, final delivery from
producer or processor to the point of retail sale accounts for only 4 percent of the U.S. food system's
greenhouse gas emissions. Final delivery accounts for only about a quarter of the total miles, and 40
percent of the transport-related emissions, in the food supply chain as a whole. That's because there
are also "upstream" miles and emissions associated with things like transport of fertilizer, pesticides,
and animal feed. Overall, transport accounts for about 11 percent of the food system's emissions.

By contrast, Weber and Matthews found, agricultural production accounts for the bulk of the food
system's greenhouse gas emissions: 83 percent of emissions occur before food even leaves the farm
gate. A recent life-cycle analysis of the U.K. food system, by Tara Garnett, yielded similar results. In
her study, transport accounted for about a tenth of the food system's greenhouse gas emissions,
and agricultural production accounted for half. Garnett says the same general patterns likely also
hold for Europe as a whole.

There's Something about Dairy

The other clear result that emerges from these analyses is that what you eat matters at least as
much as how far it travels, and agriculture's overwhelming "hotspots" are red meat and dairy
production. In part that's due to the inefficiency of eating higher up on the food chain-it takes more
energy, and generates more emissions, to grow grain, feed it to cows, and produce meat or dairy
products for human consumption, than to feed grain to humans directly. But a large portion of
emissions associated with meat and dairy production take the form of methane and nitrous oxide,
greenhouse gases that are respectively 23 and 296 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Methane is
produced by ruminant animals (cows, goats, sheep, and the like) as a byproduct of digestion, and is
also released by the breakdown of all types of animal manure. Nitrous oxide also comes from the
breakdown of manure (as well as the production and breakdown of fertilizers).

In Garnett's study, meat and dairy accounted for half of the U.K. food system's greenhouse gas
emissions. In fact, she writes, "the major contribution made by agriculture itself reflects the GHG
[greenhouse gas] intensity of livestock rearing." Weber and Matthews come to a similar conclusion:
"No matter how it is measured, on average red meat is more GHG-intensive than all other forms of
food," responsible for about 150 percent more emissions than chicken or fish. In their study the
second-largest contributor to emissions was the dairy industry.

Nor are these two studies unique in their findings. A group of Swedish researchers has calculated
that meat and dairy contribute 58 percent of the total food emissions from a typical Swedish diet. At
a global level, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that livestock account for 18
percent of all greenhouse gas emissions-more even than all forms of fossil fuel-based transport
combined.

"Broadly speaking, eating fewer meat and dairy products and consuming more plant foods in their
place is probably the single most helpful behavioral shift one can make" to reduce food-related
greenhouse gas emissions, Garnett argues.

Weber and Matthews calculated that reducing food miles to zero-an all-but-impossible goal in
practice-would reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the food system by only about
5 percent, equivalent to driving 1,000 miles less over the course of a year. By comparison, replacing
red meat and dairy with chicken, fish, or eggs for one day per week would save the equivalent of
driving 760 miles per year. Replacing red meat and dairy with vegetables one day a week would be
like driving 1,160 miles less. "Thus," they write, "we suggest that dietary shift can be a more
effective means of lowering an average household's food-related climate footprint than buying
local.'"

However, Weber acknowledges, "these calculations were done assuming that local foods are no
different than non-local foods." And that's not always the case. For example, local-food advocates
also emphasize eating seasonal (often meaning field-grown) and less-processed foods. Those
qualities, along with shorter distances from farm to table, will also contribute to lower emissions
compared to the "average" diet.

Food marketed in the local food economy-at farmers' markets and through community-supported
agriculture (CSA) schemes-is frequently also organic. Organic food often (though not always) is
associated with lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventionally grown food, because organics
don't generate the emissions associated with production, transport, and application of synthetic
fertilizers and pesticides.

Organic food also has other environmental benefits: less use of toxic chemicals promotes greater
farmland biodiversity, and organic fields require less irrigation under some conditions. Because local
food is so frequently talked about in terms of food miles, its environmental benefits have largely
been couched in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. But food's carbon footprint "can't be the only
measuring stick of environmental sustainability," notes Gail Feenstra, a food systems analyst at the
University of California at Davis Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

Finally, farmers who market locally are often relatively small in scale, and can more feasibly adopt
environmentally beneficial practices such as growing a diversity of crops, planting cover crops,
leaving weedy field borders or planting hedgerows that provide a refuge for native biodiversity, and
integrating crop and livestock production. In short, Weber says, "the production practices matter a
lot more than where the food was actually grown. If buying local also means buying with better
production practices then that's great, that's going to make a huge difference."

Of course, the relationship between local food marketing and sustainable agricultural practices is far
from perfect. A small farmer can still spray pesticides and plow from road to road. Not all farmers-
market vendors are organic. Clare Hinrichs, who calls herself an "ardent" farmers-market shopper,
nevertheless acknowledges that "the actual consequences-both intended or unintended-[of local
food systems] haven't really been all that closely or systematically studied."

How Green Is My Valley?

So, is local food greener? Not necessarily. But look at the question from the opposite direction: if
you're a consumer interested in greener food, the local food economy is currently a good place to
find it. By the same token, a farmer who sells in the local food economy might be more likely to
adopt or continue sustainable practices in order to meet this customer demand. If local food has
environmental benefits, they aren't all-or perhaps even mainly-intrinsic to local-ness. Or, as Hinrichs
has written, "it is the social relation, not the spatial location, per se, that accounts for this outcome."

For local food advocates like Sage Van Wing, that interaction between producer and consumer,
between farmer and eater, is precisely the point. Regarding food miles, Van Wing says, "I'm not
interested in that at all." For her, purchasing an apple isn't just about the greenhouse gas emissions
involved in producing and transporting the fruit, "it's also about how those apples were farmed, how
the farm workers were treated"-a broad array of ecological, social, and economic factors that add up
to sustainability. Interacting directly with the farmer who grows her food creates a "standard of
trust," she says.
Christopher Weber, who followed a vegan diet for 10 years and calls himself "somewhat of a self-
proclaimed foodie," agrees: "That's one thing that's really great about local food, and one of the
reasons that I buy locally, is because you can actually know your farmer and know what they're
doing."

Van Wing says that her approach to local food has evolved over time-she started out trying to eat
within a 100-mile radius, but now she simply tries to get each food item from the closest source
feasible. Foods that can't be grown nearby are either rare treats or have disappeared from her diet
altogether. "I just don't do things that don't make sense," she says. Her statement echoes journalist
and sustainable-agriculture guru Michael Pollan, who in his recent book In Defense of Food offers a
common-sense guide to eating ethically and well: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." You
could sum up the ecological case for eating locally by adding one more sentence: "Mostly what's in
season and grown not too far away."

Yet there are limits to this common-sense approach. In many areas, the climate is such that eating
local, seasonal, field-grown produce would be a pretty bleak proposition for much of the year. Large
concentrations of people live in areas not suited to growing certain staple crops; it's one thing to
forego bananas, but quite another to give up wheat. And population density itself works against
relocalization of the food system. Most of the land within 100 miles of large cities such as New York
is itself very built up; where will the farmland to feed us all locally come from? (By the same token,
that very situation makes preservation of what farmland remains all the more important, a goal that
buying from local farmers can help advance.)

In this sense, life-cycle analyses of the current food system offer a paradoxically hopeful perspective,
because they suggest that, if the goal is to improve the environmental sustainability of the food
system as a whole, then there are a variety of public policy levers that we can pull. To be sure,
promoting more localized food production and distribution networks would reduce transport
emissions. But what if a greater investment in rail infrastructure helped to reverse the trend toward
transporting more food by inefficient semi-truck? What if fuel economy standards were increased
for the truck fleet that moves our food? Or, to name one encompassing possibility, what if a carbon-
pricing system incorporated some of the environmental costs of agriculture that are currently
externalized? Local food is delicious, but the problem-and perhaps the solution-is global.