Discussion Over How Good Local Food Really Is

Researchers at the University of Califronia have been lucky enough to have their findings on ‘local food’ picked up by the NY Times and therefore added to the debate on what is good news. The team went to see how green local food is and ok, ok, some of their findings are rather ‘no-shit-sherlock’, but the story does well by covering the complexities of modern food consumption:

The local food, or locavore, movement has so much momentum that some of the food glitterati have declared that such food is better than organic …While the research is not yet complete, Tom Tomich, director of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, said the fact that something is local doesn’t necessarily mean that it is better, environmentally speaking.

The distance that food travels from farm to plate is certainly important, he says, but so is how food is packaged, how it is grown, how it is processed and how it is transported to market.

Consider strawberries. If mass producers of strawberries ship their product to Chicago by truck, the fuel cost of transporting each carton of strawberries is relatively small, since it is tucked into the back along with thousands of others.

But if a farmer sells his strawberries at local farmers’ markets in California, he ferries a much smaller amount by pickup truck to each individual market. Which one is better for the environment? …Are canned tomatoes a better environmental choice in the winter than fresh tomatoes from abroad? If a product that contains heavy packaging reduces the amount of food waste, is that a better choice than one that is lightly packed and spoils quicker?

If It’s Fresh and Local, Is It Always Greener? - New York Times