Shoppers can be misled about the carbon
footprint benefits of buying locally-produced food.
The latest research is from the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia,
adding to earlier and similar research in the United Kingdom and North America.
More important than the distance food
travels is how it is produced and how far shoppers drive to buy it, says
Australia’s main research organization.
''Local food can often have a higher carbon footprint than food from
afar,'' says principal researcher Brad Ridoutt.
He says even home-grown vegetables, with ''zero food miles'', do not
necessarily have a smaller carbon footprint than those bought in the supermarket.
''With my veggies, I drive to Bunnings to buy fertiliser, and I go away
for the weekend and forget to water them, and in the end I only harvest a few
things that I can actually eat.
''By contrast, big producers, who can invest in the latest energy-efficient,
water-efficient technology, and make use of all the parts of food, can be much
more efficient,'' he says.
Of course, transporting food from producer to retailer still burns
fossil fuels that release greenhouse gas emissions, in turn accelerating global
warming. But freight emissions are only a fraction of those released during
production, meaning even imported food, sustainably produced, can have a
smaller carbon footprint than local alternatives.
The CSIRO research, focusing on farm and production emissions, as well
as and other environmental impacts, should ultimately allow for comparisons
between production and freight emissions.
The only Australian study to make this comparison was by Aldi and Planet
Ark in in 2010. It found that a brand of Italian olive oil had a carbon
footprint about 14 per cent smaller, per 100 millilitres, than that of a local
brand, despite travelling about ten times as far, mainly because of its steel
tin packaging and low-impact, traditional farm production.
British studies have also shown shoppers are likely to be responsible
for fewer emissions if they buy organic fruit shipped from New Zealand, and
beans air-freighted from manual farms in Kenya, rather than British equivalents
grown in gas-heated greenhouses.
Peter
Shawn Taylor, a columnist for the Waterloo Region Record, raised eyebrows two
years ago when he wrote a column explaining why strawberries from California
sold in local supermarkets have a lower carbon footprint than locally-grown
strawberries.
Speaking
Tuesday at Farm & Food Care’s annual meeting in Waterloo, David Smith, vice-president
for sustainability for Sobeys Inc., said transportation averages less than two
per cent of the total carbon footprint for products his supermarket chain
markets.
