Eating food produced close to home is one of the surest ways to reduce fossil fuel consumption, right?
Not so, according to an op-ed in The New York Times. While there are many compelling reasons to eat local, monitoring your "food miles" won't always trim your carbon footprint:
... scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that 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.
Rubbish.
view Lesley - London's profile
On a similar vein, the London-based Times Online has a story of a report by a leading environmentalist that walking may produce more carbon than driving due to higher food-production costs.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2195538.ece
view phaedrus's profile
This is the last lamb I bought in London
http://www.farmersharp.co.uk/herdwick_sheep.htm
http://www.farmersharp.co.uk/history.htm
And this the time before that
http://www.thegingerpig.co.uk/
view Lesley - London's profile
This assumes that people who drive more will eat less. If you look at your usual fat American who'd rather a mile than walk, they're not buying any less food. To look at the whole picutre, the walking person is out of the house for longer than the driver, which implies the TV, air conditioner, lights, computer, etc. are on less at the house. It also seems likely that they'd be buying food with less packaging. With more context, the numbers might tell a very different story.
view AMLitt's profile