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A potato too far
Narrow attacks on the concept of food miles can't detract from the vital importance of eating locally -- for ourselves and for the planet
Alisa Smith, Citizen Special
Published: Monday, October 15, 2007To make the statement "local eating is good for the environment" has become oddly controversial of late. But let's take the most ideal form of local eating and move outward from there.
You walk to the neighbourhood garden shop to buy seeds produced by a local company, and plant them in your backyard. You fertilize the soil with your composted kitchen scraps. As weeds spring up you tear them out by hand. At harvest time, you carefully pluck the fruits of your labour, and carry them into the kitchen to prepare a fresh, healthy meal.
The amount of fossil fuel in this picture is close to zero. It is safe to say that this is what David Suzuki had in mind when he said, "Local eating ... may be one of the most important ways we save ourselves and the planet."
Alisa Smith, right, co-wrote 'The 100-Mile Diet' with J.B. MacKinnon.
This is the food system that takes 57 calories of fossil fuel to make one calorie of pre-washed, packaged lettuce, as Michael Pollan reported in The Omnivore's Dilemma. Is this the modern definition of efficiency? Transpose this process across the world to China -- which is happening increasingly often these days with fresh produce destined for the North American market -- and the picture darkens further.
Into the gloaming of the industrial economy step some scientists with a score to settle. These scientists live in New Zealand, whose food economy now depends on the British market, more than 18,000 kilometres away. Their report debunking food miles, led by professor Caroline Saunders of Lincoln University, trumpeted some shocking results this summer, hot on the heels of a similar study they released last year. Exporting New Zealand lamb (and apples, and dairy products) contributes fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than British-produced equivalents sold in the U.K. So carry on flying food across the world, they concluded.
It is as if these scientists were asking, "Stalin or Mussolini, whom would you choose?" Your answer might then be, "Mussolini -- he killed fewer of his own citizens; the trains ran on time." We're still dealing with two evils.
The scientists' premise is that New Zealand farming techniques are more efficient, and that this must remain a permanent state of affairs. The British have some bad habits that also must never change for these results to remain true. Such as: British farmers depend heavily on greenhouse-growing to supply markets year-round. They use more imported feed for their sheep, more fertilizer to grow crops, and refrigerate their produce longer.
"New Zealand's efficiency factor in trade cannot be ignored," Prof. Saunders argued. "Our report clearly demonstrates the fallacy of using a simplistic concept like 'food miles' as a basis for restrictive trade and marketing policies."
However, the proper ecological answer should not be, let's carry on exporting New Zealand goods by plane to England, but rather, let's smarten up British farming techniques and consumer habits.
One of the professors who developed the term "food miles" is perfectly aware of its limitations; its magic is something else entirely. "I have been an academic and a think tanker for decades. You can have as much evidence as you want, but to have an impact you have to capture people's minds and hearts and brains -- and the food miles concept has certainly made a big impact in the public imagination," professor Tim Lang of London's City University told Britain's Channel 4 news.
Certainly, it's important to add the more complex variables as they become known. That's exactly what the British government intends to do when, over the next year or so, its scientists develop a standardized "carbon footprint" calculator for food so that grocery stores can apply meaningful environmental labels. It's part of the U.K.'s plan to reduce the ecological and social costs of food transport by 20 per cent by 2012.
Throwing numbers aside for a moment, the most important environmental benefit of local eating may be the sense of stewardship that thinking within a local radius can bring each and every individual. For instance, the year my partner and I ate foods grown and processed within 100 miles of where we lived, there was a crisis in the heart of salmon territory that shook us to the core.
Nearly all the Fraser River runs were closed to commercial fishing, so we thought we'd catch our own salmon. Then a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in the Cheakamus River, destroying most life and, of course, the opportunity even for sport fishing in the river we'd chosen.
There were alarmed headlines, sure, but people moved on quickly. You could go into the fish shop and still get salmon, it was just coming from farther away: the Queen Charlotte Islands or Alaska, or perhaps there was lox from the Atlantic coast. The illusion of abundance remained.
But for us, it was a fundamental deprivation and tragedy that made us realize that we need to take care of the resources close at hand. It seemed sensible and right that every local area should be able to feed itself. Our 100-mile circle included farmland, too: of course every city should have its own agricultural belt so that it could be self sufficient, rather than depending on the elusive and dwindling "somewhere else."
There are easy things we can do to support this future world of sustainability: learn when local foods are in season and eat them in their time, whether bought from small-scale farmers or grown ourselves. Really, that's all -- and the food tastes better, too.
Not only, at this point in history, do we need to think outside the box -- we need to think inside the circle. That way, the broadmindedness of common sense will prevail over the sometimes narrow slices of reality dealt with by scientists.
Alisa Smith is co-author of the best-selling book The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=75ef2b0d-29f5-420e-a1b9-de3f1b6efefe
