Comments on: Study confirms what we already know: Local is better!

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:41:51 +0000

Hatchet was nice enough to send me some additional information about this study, and one stat that I thought was interesting was that out of the 19% of our US fossil fuel consumption that comes from food production, only 5% is from actually MOVING the food from place to place and a whopping 14% is from producing and packaging that food.

The good news is that it’s easy to impact that 14% by simply buying more whole food and less packaged food, and by buying organic so that you’re supporting farmers who opt for fertilizer and treatments that do not, by definition, come from fossil fuels.

By: Nickie

Nickie — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:22:33 +0000

I think it is great that studies like this are done. I make an effort to visit our local farmer’s market for our produce needs, as we recently moved and won’t be able to start a garden until next year.
When we do go to the grocery store, I’m proud of my boyfriend (who would never have noticed last year) who gets excited about only buying local produce…and skips over the stuff grown in far away lands.
Kudos to you for posting such important topics on your blog!

By: Hatchet

Hatchet — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:58:33 +0000

Yay Locavores!

In response to Myrto’s concerns about shifting the problems of food produced “over there” for food produced “right here”, the problems that can be caused are already being caused. They are just being felt mostly “over there”, where “there” may be a foreign country that doesn’t care about its workers, soil or water as much as we do. Also, if you stop to think about it, we USED to do all our own food growing and processing in all our local communities until some bright bulb figured out that someone else could or would do it cheaper elsewhere.

By bringing the demand for food local, however, there is a greater chance for good. Local communities would see an increase in jobs that are within their community, money stays and is spent within the community and you can control your food a LOT better when you know who makes it and where it and any inputs come from. When you just walk into a grocery store and pick up a head of lettuce, you get NO SAY in how that lettuce was grown, picked, shipped or how the workers in that line were treated. If, however, you choose to either grow your own, or develop a relationship with a farmer you get to choose the farmer and support their practices. Don’t like the conventional farmer? Try another one whose farming practices are more in line with YOUR environmental ethics. Think the organic farmer is too “out there” for your food to be safe with them? Find another one.

In short, moving the demand for food from outsourced to locally sourced will be a GOOD thing, overall, for our communities.

By: Myrto Ashe

Myrto Ashe — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:17:11 +0000

That’s interesting because the fossil fuel impact of well-travelled food often tends to be minimized. For example, it is staggering when the food is flown in, but perhaps not so noticeable when the food comes from China by boat. Locavores have had to use a combination of reasons (support the local economy, peak oil, improve health, etc…) to fully justify the effort of eating locally. And yet, adopted on a large scale, local food may prove problematic (irrigation, energy used in home canning and freezing). At least, cutting out the Diet Coke (and all other bottled drinks, really, especially the ones requiring refrigerated transportation) seems the obvious first step for folks concerned with the carbon footprint of their food.

By the way, WRT processed soy, Sharon Astyk (www.sharonastyk.com) claims that making tofu is easy with the right equipment. Though I’ve also heard that’s not true. I’m hoping to move to a vegetarian diet once the kids actually eat vegetables.

And another carbon consideration is simply raw vs. cooked food. It’s much better for the planet to eat fresh fruit than fruit pie for example. Also, interestingly, it’s what you might choose to do if you have to make all the processed food yourself. Let’s see, do I bite into this peach, or do I mix flour and butter and roll out dough, measure sugar and flour and peel and cut up the fruit, then wait an hour for the thing to bake while it heats up my house to over 90 degrees…

By: eastendjenn

eastendjenn — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:44:39 +0000

I’ve been trying to move our family toward more local fare recently, and while we’re certainly not exclusive, we’re making some great strides. Starting in our own backyard – we planted a garden for the first time this summer (just hauled in 30+ pounds of potatoes this past weekend). But it’s summer, and the season is making that a little easier for us. I’m looking forward to learning much more about the benefits of local by reading here!

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:20:33 +0000

I agree that vegan can be a really low-impact diet, but I also think that many folks (myself included–my family was vegetarian for nearly 12 years and only recently introduced local pastured chicken to our diet) use a lot of processed foods to supplement the vegetarian/vegan diet. In our case, we’ve given up Boca/Quorn/Morningstar Farms type meat replacements in favor of chicken, feeling like it’s the better choice.

But I do agree that the invisible choices are huge–I don’t even want to think about how I am contributing to Colorado’s overpopulation and overuse of scarce water resources…

By: MamaBird/SurelyYouNest

MamaBird/SurelyYouNest — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:17:08 +0000

Wow, fascinating study. I remember reading, too, that if you’re vegan it trumps local food. Not that I am vegan just that it inspires me to cut out the meat and dairy whenever it occurs to me. I often think that it’s the invisible choices (insulation, where you live, etc) that are far more important overall to your impact.