Super Freakonomics authors come down hard on local food
“Food that’s imported from halfway across the world has a much smaller carbon footprint than locally grown food.” This was the quote by Stephen Dubner, coauthor of Super Freakonomics, during ABC’s 20/20 last Friday night (air date: 10-24-09). Dubner and his coauthor, Steven Levitt, apparently adopted this conclusion after reading a study by two Carnegie Mellon researchers, Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, who found that 80 percent of the emissions associated with food are in the production phase while transportation represents only 11 percent of food emissions. Unfortunately, it’s quite a leap to go from this to “buying locally produced food actually increases greenhouse-gas emissions.”
There is only one reason our food system uses so much energy in the production phase–large-scale, industrial production that has little in common with the family-owned farm associated with local food. The small-scale farmer selling fresh produce and grass fed meat at your local farmers market is responsible for a fraction of the fossil fuels consumed by large agribusiness that relies on the production and supply of fertilizers and pesticides and cheap energy at all stages of food production.
The physical transport of food may comprise only 11 percent of its carbon footprint, but this shouldn’t suggest that food miles don’t matter. For one thing foods destined for a long, perhaps rough, journey must be harvested and prepared with this in mind–requiring more fossil fuels for quick mechanical harvesting, extra packaging and very likely cold storage or some form of processing. The 11 percent figure only captures transit, none of the energy-intensive methods and systems that must be employed to move food long distances from crop to table quickly and with the least damage to appearance and quality. When we accept high food miles, we also support energy-intensive steps that local food avoids.
I have no doubt that Weber’s and Mathew’s figures are legitimate, but using them to support an inconclusive, and ridiculous, statement like “buying locally produced food actually increases greenhouse-gas emissions” shows a real lack of knowledge on their part about the industrial food system and the sustainable food movement.
The local food movement is a viable way to reduce your food footprint, as long as “local” for you doesn’t mean an industrial feedlot or chemically and mechanically dependent agribusiness that happens to be located in your county! Local food choices should support family-owned or co-oped farms practicing sustainable agriculture. For a list of local producers, visit localharvest.org.
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