Local Food is a Mistake
My rough model of the political left is that it’s good at finding problems and bad at finding solutions. Thus, people on the left correctly diagnose that there’s a serious housing shortage in many places, but then advocate for more rent control and say things like “we cannot build our way out of a housing crisis.” Thus, disability rights groups correctly point out that people with disabilities are discriminated against, but then advocate for laws that perpetuate discrimination.
But the left’s “real problem, bad solution” habit is most acute when it comes to climate change. Climate change is a serious problem that the left has taken much more seriously than the right, but the left can’t help backing one bad idea after another. They oppose nuclear power, genetically modified organisms, and renewable power projects. They support plastic bag bans, which don’t work. They often support organic food, which is more energy intensive. And they support local food.
In fairness to the left, the political right also supports local food (though for different reasons). Earlier this year, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote that “today’s G.O.P. is most clearly now the party of local capitalism.” People want to help their neighbours, not foreign corporations, so they stump for the small-scale farmer down the road.
Politically neutral organizations also tout the merits of local food. In 2014, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food said that local food was “a rare opportunity to support more nutritious diets and more sustainable food systems in one fell swoop.” COP26, last year’s U.N. climate change conference, bragged that 80 percent of the conference’s menu was sourced from local (i.e., Scottish) sources.
This is a mistake. Despite what most people believe, local food is frequently worse for the environment or makes no difference. It seems obvious that, when choosing between something grown locally or grown on the other side of the world, the local option is always better, but this is usually not the case for a few reasons.
First, focusing on food miles leaves out more significant factors. Consider this example, which I got from the not-for-profit organization Drawdown Dietetics (which is co-run by Anneke Hobson, to whom I’m married). A small truck is a lot less efficient than a cargo ship, so, literally comparing apples to apples, the emissions assigned to each apple will be much lower when it travels by cargo ship or another efficient form of transportation, such as rail. Thus, “huge shipments of millions of apples from far-away places like New Zealand are comparable in emissions to apples grown in Canada and transported to the consumer in many small trucks.” The distance the food travels isn’t that important.
In contrast, energy use in growing food is important. Many foods grown in Ontario need to be grown in heated greenhouses, which makes them substantially more energy intensive than foods grown in warmer climates such as California. Overall, even though Ontario lettuce has a shorter distance to travel to consumers in Ontario, Californian lettuce uses four times less energy.
Field-grown produce fares no better, especially when it involves small producers. This is because driving to get the product from a local farm or farmers market contributes a lot of emissions. Per Drawdown Dietetics, “One study found that even when local, seasonal food had slightly lower emissions, this benefit would be offset if the consumer had to drive a round-trip of more than 6.7 km in a car to get to the producer or farmers market for that single food item.”
It also matters what people are buying locally. According to Our World in Data, on average, transportation accounts for less than 10 percent of a food’s emissions. But for the highest emitting foods, such as lamb and beef, transportation is less than 0.5 percent of total emissions. Hannah Ritchie, head of research at Our World in Data, sums it up as follows: “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.” Decreasing meat consumption will be significantly more impactful than buying local.
Local food is an environmental red herring. At best, it’s a distraction. At worst, promoting local food actively works against the vital mission of stopping climate change.
Lots of benefits of buying local. Tangible and non-tangible.
Driving to a supermarket or a farmers' market is about same distance for consumers but a farmer driving a truck 15 miles to market is better than a truck driving from California across country is it not? Also consider the local farm will use less packaging and yes the food is higher quality and less food waste since it can be donated to local food bank or composted if not sold. I can go on and on.
An interesting post. I do think there are other arguments in favour of local food. Even with regard to emissions, I imagine much has to do with context. Heating greenhouses becomes a lot less carbon intensive if geothermal or nuclear is the power source. Car emissions similarly matter less the more people use EVs. But local food may also become important in Ontario if California's water supply issue continues to degrade. And some food simply *taste better* if they're local: this is simply undeniable when it comes to things like strawberries and tomatoes. That all said, important to have a more nuanced look at all the trade-offs. The global food supply chain will always be important.