Better Than Local
When we think of eating green, we often think of locally produced food as being the most ecological choice. Local eating is the latest environmental buzz. People want to know how “green” their tomato is. Is it an island hopper with pages of stamps in its passport, or is it a down home local from the farmer’s market?
Buying and eating regionally is a noble pursuit; however, few people realize that in terms of eating carbon consciously, choosing a tomato is always a better option than choosing an animal product, regardless of the proximity of its production. A closer look at production and distribution mechanisms behind local animal products reveals that they are far from being the “green superstars” many in the local food movement believe them to be.
While buying regionally grown and produced food is usually good for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, choosing a plant-based product over an animal product reduces our environmental impact significantly more. Upon deeper investigation into production, local animal products have far more environmental impact than a tomato with a tropical tan. A 2008 study in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology found that shifting just two meals a week from meat and dairy products to a vegetarian diet reduces more greenhouse gasses than buying all locally-sourced food.
There is more to assessing the ecological consequence of a food product than where it was grown or produced. The total production effect, as well as the energy and water needed to produce the product, must be taken into account. When gauging the carbon footprint of food, transportation (or how ‘”local” the food) is only 11 percent of the equation, while production is a stunning 83 percent.
Few people ever stop to ask where the feed for local farm animals come from. Animals raised for meat, dairy, and eggs are fed soy, oats, alfalfa, and corn, among other foods. Feed crops are usually not grown locally. Even “grass-fed” cows are fed imported grain some portion of the year. Grain that could be going directly to people is shipped for hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to feed “local” farm animals. This is in addition to the water wasted growing those grains, the fossil fuel wasted on the slaughtering process, and refrigeration energy costs,etc. The production cost of local animal products is enormous compared to the low carbon footprint of plant food. |
