You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local
An important analysis of how WHAT we eat (not necessarily HOW it’s grown) impacts our carbon footprint the most.
Of course we advocate for regenerative plant-based systems—perpetually-soil-creative systems that don’t require killing animals—alongside re-wilding lands previously used for livestock as an ultimate goal, but these data show that even the best livestock practices can cost more carbon than the worst conventional vegetable farming practices. Grazing advocates often compare the best of grazing practices with the worst of conventional annual tillage practices as a way to justify them. And here, we see that through the lens of carbon only, some of those assumptions are simply not true. Of course we want all our plant systems to be regenerative, and —that’s the goal—but as a transitional strategy, it’s always sobering to look at facts through different lenses.
The article also upends the notion that local is presently always better with regard to energy and carbon expended for transportation. Of course there are great benefits to keeping food production close to points of consumption (nutrient-preservation and economics for example), but hawk’s-eye view thoughtful contemplation as we define the meaning of ‘regeneration’ in our food systems. Local and plant-based wins this calculus most every time.
Click on the image to read this full article by Hannah Ritchie, on the website Our World in Data.
excerpts
"Eating local only slightly reduces your emissions.”
"Eating local beef or lamb has many times the carbon footprint of most other foods. Whether they are grown locally or shipped from the other side of the world matters very little for total emissions”.
"Transport typically accounts for less than 1% of beef’s GHG emissions: choosing to eat local has very minimal effects on its total footprint. You might think this figure is strongly dependent on where in the world you live, and how far your beef will have to travel, but …I work through an example to show why it doesn’t make a lot of difference.”
"Whether you buy it from the farmer next door or from far away, it is not the location that makes the carbon footprint of your dinner large, but the fact that it is beef.”