The local food movement has been growing rapidly around the world. 100-Mile Challenge is a television show featuring families challenging themselves to only eat foods that were grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their home. The "Buy Ontario" campaign of the provincial government encourages Ontario's consumers to buy seasonal, locally-grown food in order to support Ontario farmers. Similarly, "Savour Ontario" is another part of the same strategy that promotes fine restaurants that serve locally grown and produced foods. Restaurants that join the program clearly identify menu items to allow patrons to choose local foods. However, this focus on the distance food travels from the producer to the consumer is misleading; perhaps "buy local" advocates are aiming at the wrong stretch of the road.
Food distribution is a multi-faceted system involving transportation and infrastructure, as well as storage and often refrigeration. Various statistics indicate that roughly 15% to 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions can be accounted for by food production and distribution. Within that amount, one study shows that 83% is created during food production, 11% during transport, and only 4% during transport from producers to consumers. (Weber 2008) What this indicates is that when considering the transportation of food, much of the greenhouse gas emissions are generated by the production and not the final step of delivery.
Still, the distance food travels from farm to plate is not an accurate indication of the impact its production has on the environment(DeWeerdt 2008), even the simple amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The transportation and production methods are far more telling: trains are several times more efficient than trucks and open field farms use minimal energy when compared to heated greenhouses. Even further, the energy used to heat the greenhouses could come from renewable sources or from coal-burning power plants. A distance-based local food movement may not be realistic in and around large urban centres simply because farmland has already been pushed away from the cities. Another overlooked aspect is so-called "upstream" transportation creating greenhouse gases, i.e. transportation of supplies like fertilizer to farms.
If the 100-mile approach isn't the right direction, the local food movement still has weight, bringing the farmer and the consumer closer in more than measurable distances. The advantage in efficiency of rail transport over diesel-burning trucks could outweigh the benefits of eating food from a 100-mile radius if the locally-grown food uses high volumes of fertilizer and a warm and humid greenhouse situated in the snowbelt. It may be more pertinent to aim for eating local foods that are in season, or focusing on choosing cleaner transportation methods or improving existing methods.
Food distribution is a multi-faceted system involving transportation and infrastructure, as well as storage and often refrigeration. Various statistics indicate that roughly 15% to 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions can be accounted for by food production and distribution. Within that amount, one study shows that 83% is created during food production, 11% during transport, and only 4% during transport from producers to consumers. (Weber 2008) What this indicates is that when considering the transportation of food, much of the greenhouse gas emissions are generated by the production and not the final step of delivery.
Still, the distance food travels from farm to plate is not an accurate indication of the impact its production has on the environment(DeWeerdt 2008), even the simple amount of greenhouse gas emissions. The transportation and production methods are far more telling: trains are several times more efficient than trucks and open field farms use minimal energy when compared to heated greenhouses. Even further, the energy used to heat the greenhouses could come from renewable sources or from coal-burning power plants. A distance-based local food movement may not be realistic in and around large urban centres simply because farmland has already been pushed away from the cities. Another overlooked aspect is so-called "upstream" transportation creating greenhouse gases, i.e. transportation of supplies like fertilizer to farms.
If the 100-mile approach isn't the right direction, the local food movement still has weight, bringing the farmer and the consumer closer in more than measurable distances. The advantage in efficiency of rail transport over diesel-burning trucks could outweigh the benefits of eating food from a 100-mile radius if the locally-grown food uses high volumes of fertilizer and a warm and humid greenhouse situated in the snowbelt. It may be more pertinent to aim for eating local foods that are in season, or focusing on choosing cleaner transportation methods or improving existing methods.
Sources
Weber, Christopher L. and H. Scott Matthews. 2008. Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States. Environmental Science and Technology 42, no. 10. (April 16), http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es702969f
DeWeerdt, Sarah. 2008. Is Local Food Better? Worldwatch Institute. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064
- Stanley Sun
