Pablo Looks at Carbon Footprint of Local Food
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 7.07
Pablo at Triplepundit wondered if worry about foodmiles was justified. Many point to a New Zealand study that found that "dairy and lamb production in New Zealand was more energy efficient than the British equivalent, even when the 12,000-mile trip to the UK was included." He notes:
"The macroeconomic concepts that drive globalization state that production of goods should occur in the country or region best suited to maximize the economic efficiency. But do these economic concepts take into account the impact of transportation? Probably not. The impact of transportation, primarily the climate change effects of the resulting greenhouses and security issues surrounding petroleum fuel, is typically externalized to society. That is, society pays for the poor environmental decision-making of the market."
So he looked at a bowl of cherries.
Let's look at an example. I am very confident about some calculations that I made on the production of Cherries. I used a cost study from UC Davis to determine the energy input versus the yield. I arrived at roughly 4.85 kg of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent units) for each kg of cherries. If we assume 500 km of transportation by semi we add 0.06 kg CO2e, or about 1.2%. If the same cherries are grown in Argentina and flown to the US (21,000 km) the emissions jump to 16.82 kg CO2e per kg of cherries, or 71.1%. Quite a difference!
He does point out that dried cherries transported by ship would have less impact because transport is so much more fuel efficient.
So, the impact of foodmiles depends on several factors:
* The distance transported.
* The transport mode.
* The concentration of the agricultural product (dehydrated or concentrated is better).
* The relative agricultural productivity and the amount of fertilizer required in each location.
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The important thing is to look at the whole lifecycle, since food miles (or food kilometres) make up only part of the environmental cost of production. The cherries example assumes that the emissions due to production is the same in both countries: that may be true for cherries for all that I know, but in the case of lamb the emissions due to (surface) transportation can be completely outweighed by the difference between production emissions in different places.
this is behond food miles, eventually given the fact that few large corporations control a large number of the seed sales in thev world the battle will be about we will ultimately controls the cultivation, poroduction and distribution of food. Do we want large corporatins dictating what we eat, how we eat it and when we eat it? If we buy locally grown seasonal organic produce the cycle of food production remains in the hand of small, independent farms that are connected with the local ecology of the land and with the local culture.
this is behond food miles, eventually given the fact that few large corporations control a large number of the seed sales in the world the battle will be about we will ultimately controls the cultivation, poroduction and distribution of food. Do we want large corporations dictating what we eat, how we eat it and when we eat it? If we buy locally grown seasonal organic produce the cycle of food production remains in the hand of small, independent farms that are connected with the local ecology of the land and with the local culture.