Freakonomists on the Merits of Local Food
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 06.10.08
Stephen Dubner of Freakonomics fame looks at the issue: "I very much understand the locavore instinct. To eat locally grown food or, even better, food that you’ve grown yourself, seems as if it should be 1) more delicious; 2) more nutritious; 3) cheaper; and 4) better for the environment. But is it?"
He concludes otherwise, quoting a study on Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices
"Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. 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."
However fuel consumption is only one of the reasons that the the local food movement has taken off, and probably not the most important. Dubner compares industrial food to food grown in your garden, rather than to the food bought from local farmers through farmers markets or retailers. The "ruthlessly efficient" industrial food system delivers a lousy product--albeit efficiently.
The study quoted also notes that "the production phase contributes 83% of food's carbon footprint. I suspect that is a whole lot lower in local food then it is on a massive farm in California. For his argument to be plausible, one would have to look at the full range of energy consumption, not just getting it from the farm to the store. ::Freakonomics via ::PSFK.
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"the production phase contributes 83% of food's carbon footprint. I suspect that is a whole lot lower in local food then it is on a massive farm in California."
I'm not sure that I suspect this - you're making a lot of assumptions about location. Ontario tomatoes and other produce have been available all winter here in Toronto (a lot of treehugger sources seem to be here too?). Given the record-setting winter we've had, and the fact that the grocers make no bones about their hydroponic/hothouse source, I would be hard pushed to share your suspicions. If the impact of transport is only 11% of the overall, it seems to me quite feasible that the least environmental thing to do could be to eat local.
What is GHG?
I won't even get into the absurdity of evaluating everything in tons of CO2, but to look at green house gas emissions of conventional crop production and say they must be the same for local organics is a little ridiculous.
His arguments against local eating being 1) more delicious; 2) more nutritious; 3) cheaper; and 4) better for the environment are also a little silly. 1) Taste is subjective and thus not valuable. 2) You still need some outside food to round out your diet (not true, and not really an argument against the greater nutrition of vegetables that travel less and a local diet that includes a greater variety of foods). 3) He was really bad at making ice cream so it must be more expensive for everyone to do anything local. Plus, if we specialize why not do it nationally rather than by metropolis. 4) Small scale farms must have the say carbon footprint of large scale petroleum based farms.
I know it is good to have dissent, but lets have a little more thoughtful dissent.
And if I grow with my own compost and organic fertilizer? Chemical fertilizers like Miracle-Gro are ammonium nitrate that takes 4 gallons of fuel to produce 50 lb.s, and they are water soluble so they are on average 40% on target (utilized by the plant, with the remainder running into water systems). If I use my own compost that I make on site (recycling carbon back into the soil as short term sequestration) and use plant based fertilizers like soy and alfalfa (which being carbon based themselves, means they are neither water soluble or using much energy in production AND we have more sequestration), then shouldn't my footprint be MUCH less? Methinks it would be...
Local share based agriculture is booming for a reason; safe sourcing, shorter supply routes and a conciousness of global impact. I read Freakonomics and was fascinated by the concept, but now must question the whole idea. Disraeli's line about lies, damn lies and statistics springs to mind...
And GHG is green house gasses...
The energy consumption issue aside I believe the more important issues here are corporate/government control. Local food is like local energy in that the closer to home these products are the more control we the people can exert on them. Cutting the huge and dangerous conglomerates out of the loop would be the end benefit. At this point we seem to have extremely little control of our elected officials so until we can somehow bend the government and the corporations to our best interests environmentally as well as chemically then I think we must try to produce more food locally. Producing food and energy locally might not be the most dollar efficient but it would help spread the environmental load more naturally and hold more control on the local level. I could go on and on but you get the point.
GHG - green huse gases
Many other studies find different answers than 85% of the impact being embodied in the production.
Still different studies have found that agricultural efficiency is inversely related to plot size. The smaller the farm, the more productive--to the tune of ten to twenty times more productive according to some. So just doing the math on distance traveled does not cut it. Many other factors are impacted.
But here is the reason why I find this conversation so frustrating. Andrew Weaver, lead IPCC author from the University of Victoria, calculates that we must cut 100% of our industrial emissions in order to avoid climate chaos. So who cares if switching off meat is more effective, we must do it all.
Furthermore, local could be sustainable. Industrial cannot be. Let's think more than five minutes in the future. Oil is a NON-renewable resource. It is finite. It will run out sometime. Whether it runs out now or in 100 years, it will run out, and without oil, industrial agriculture will end. Therefore, industrial agriculture is not sustainable.
Why would we invest energy (petro and human) into a system, or arguing about a system, that has no future?
If you can.. don't buy.. grow!
Regarding my previous post, here is George Monbiot's latest column, which discusses this issue.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/10/small-is-bountiful/
Sarah - LA's suspicions are about production not about transport.
Mike - Huh?
DHoisington - If you won't get into evaluating everything CO2 tons, then why do you give it a value judgment as being "ridiculous"? According to the last issue of Wired magazine organic food creates more carbon per pound than non-organic. Furthermore, you wrote:
"His arguments against local eating being 1) more delicious; 2) more nutritious; 3) cheaper; and 4) better for the environment..."
He was stating these arguments make local food attractive. He was not saying he was against it in that line.
helpfulgardener - I believe Dubner was criticizing home gardening in terms of economic efficiency not carbon footprint. Lastly, you question the "concept of Freakonmics"? Do you mean the idea of applying economic theory to subjects not covered by traditional economists? Is that the idea you want to question?
(For the record Dubner is not an economist. Just a journalist that understands economics real well.)
Questioning an idea when you don't understand the logic of the numbers seems a little misguided.
Please folks, I want an intelligent dialog, but so often people don't read the post carefully. It must drive the writers nuts.
The cost, quality, and footprint of food would be much different if transport wasn't so heavily subsidized.
I guarantee life would be better for us all, if all that road-building money stayed in people's pockets until they choose to spend it - and I doubt very much that happiness-seeking humans would choose to waste a penny more of their hard-earned dollars than necessary paving more roads.
Local gardening is economically inefficient? HUH?
This is my first year with a real garden and aside from time (which btw, is my free time, not time I would otherwise be working so no, it should NOT be factored in as a cost) my garden cost me around $50 total, including seeds, seed trays and rental of a tiller.
Next year I won't have to rent a tiller (the ground needed to be broken) or seed trays so I'll be looking at $10 for peat pots. His failure at making ice cream (which honestly, isn't the easiest thing in the world) is not a good example of the "high cost of local production" in just about every way possible. He's making a massive erroneous assumption that local producers are:
a) Inept in their craft
b) Not resourceful
c) Purchase items off the shelf to do their trade
d) Everyone and their brother will have to do local gardening in order to feed locally
ALL of which are flat out wrong. I won't bother addressing one and two since they are highly subjective (sorry buddy, I hate Big Macs) or just plain wrong (you can't grow variety? Where?).
Number four is the only one he got partially right, and even with his own data (which isn't taking into account the organic production of local goods, comon, is he even trying?) that it's 17% more resourceful to compete locally.
You don't have to go too far (I made a joke!) to find all the errors in his assumptions ;)
Screw the carbon footprint. I'm eating local, fresh, organic and free range. If anyone thinks that is damaging the planet more than factory food, speak now so we can laugh at you forever. Not to mention, the farmer is cheaper than the grocery store! (organics vs. organics)
Youre all right. But youre all wrong.
Has anyone read Bill McKibben's Deep Economy. If not, why bother.
Its a great start but this is a far bigger problem than just eating.
As an economist, prior commercial fisher, and local 100% grass-fed rancher, I disagree with Stephen Dubner’s position on specialization. What Dubner argued in his article: Do We Really Need a Few Billion Locavores? was that “specialization … is ruthlessly efficient. Which means less transportation, lower prices” and therefore a lower carbon footprint and more environmental. However, this line of thinking doesn’t hold up in ecologically sound food production. When I left corporate life working in the production and inventory area (such as APICS) for organic farming and ranching, I brought one piece of knowledge: animals are not widgets. Specialization works in industry, not nature. The environment is a web of resources: minerals, soils, plants, animals, air and sun power. It is in the integration of bio-diversity, not specialization, that creates eco-systems. Biological specialization creates feed-lots and mono-cultures. While the price per unit can be whittled down with such systems, it is only done so at ignoring the associated costs of productions – pollution, erosion, decreasing public health, water quality, air quality, etc. Classical economics puts zero costs on these by-products because the results are shared by all and can not be pinned to one place or company. This leads to a false reading of efficiency. Efficient Local farms use bio-diverse (read: non-specialized) methods to raise foods which are not only more nutritious for humans and thereby reducing future health costs, but are healing to the earth. A farm with a very small percentage of tilled land and large areas of managed, grass-fed animals of different types will mimic on a small scale, the self-renewing, cleansing and sustainable food-web nature created. And 100% grass-fed organic meat is NOT 150% GHG intensive, in fact it is Less intensive than fishing which takes fuel and boats, and is depleting our world’s fish supplies.
Comparing industrial food to local, organic, grass-based farming is like comparing a plastic chair to a fine-tooled wooden piece of furniture made from sustainable harvested trees. Of course the plastic chair is less expensive, and takes less time to make. Just like our cheap food system, many of its environmental costs are never counted, and its assets, such as longevity (or in the case of local farms, the planet and our individual improved health) are also ignored.
Who says industrial agriculture will always be oil-based? There is nothing we make from oil that we can't synthesize ourselves if given another energy source- and there are plenty of green energy sources around if we choose to use them. To say industrial agriculture will disappear due to a future lack of oil is unfounded. Yes, we will switch to a sustainable source of energy instead of fossil fuels. And we will proceed to use chemistry and science to manufacture our own products out of substances other than petroleum because it will be advantageous to do so.
Why waste all this time and effort on this argument when you could just...
(1) do your best to eat locally and support local agriculture, AND
(2) eat less meat.
One may be more effective than the other, but both will undoubtedly help the environment.
Ready, set, go!
Last year I raised two steers. I was looking for a particular breed, and could not locate them locally, so I travelled a bit to get them. They cost $300 each, plus $75 for the vet and county certificates (total 675 so far) Transportation, $75 to rent the trailer, $75 in gas. (66 international pickup with a tiny V8 and a 5 speed tranny) (total, 750) I added some bales of alfalpha at the end to finish them, about 2 a week at $10 each for 2 months, $910 total. Butchering and wrapping was about $240, total 1150 for 550 pounds of gras feed about as close to organic as I could get beef. Took less then 20 minutes a day of care. If you add in the one time costs, like the fencing the price goes up, but excluding that it cost about 2.10 a pound, for hamberger and T bones alike. I have NEVER tasted beef that was so good.
We also raised potatoes from about $4 of seed spuds. They lasted untill December when we had to start buying from the store. I never noticed how much better my potatoes were from the store bought ones untill last year. This year we have 350 feet of potatoes planted from potatoes I saved from last year, (in other words, free!!!) and 400 feet of carots planted from a $3 seed packet from FEDCO. The ground was fertalized with horse manuer, which was free other then the gas to get it home. I spent about $90 in seed and plants, and will eat most of the year off of it. I don't see how he can take his ice cream experiance and even begin to compare it to what you can do with a little thought and effort. As for my time I love to do this. I can't wait to get home on the weekend and work to a frazzel.