CO2-conscious eating: it’s more than food miles
August 7th, 2007 by Jim JustOn its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Compelling evidence suggests that there is more—or less—to food miles than meets the eye. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, it’s important to include other energy-consuming aspects of production- like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs. For example, lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures have been found for dairy products and fruit. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating.