Questioning food miles

by Julie Cummins

There was an interesting op-ed in the New York Times on Monday that questioned the validity of judging food by its miles. I felt my hackles start to rise around the third paragraph, and I began to suspect it was a rant against the Eat Local movement (probably written by a big business shill). As it turns out, the author is a "passionate cohort" of Eat Local advocates. He asks himself, "But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment?" He cites a study that shows it's four times more energy efficient for Brits to eat imported New Zealand lamb than it is to eat local British lamb.

Read the New York Times op-ed

I'll bet the lamb (and Peter Singer's Bangladeshi rice) are the exception, not the rule. I'm not giving up on my local food any time soon. Environmental benefits aside, there are many reasons to eat food produced locally (as the author, James McWilliams, acknowledges).

What I like about the op-ed is that it points out something that has been bothering me about the Eat Local movement for a while: when it comes to making good choices, eating locally produced food is only one piece of a much bigger picture, but sometimes we fixate on the local. This invites criticism from those who think the locavore diet is rigid or narrow-minded or even silly. For me, food miles are a convenient measurement. Like choosing organic, eating local is a way to opt out of the overpackaged, heavily processed, nutrient bereft, anonymous, pesticide laden, genetically engineered, multinational, unpronounceable, so-called food that's common these days. I know local is not the only answer, but it's a worthy touchstone. When I choose something local, I'm usually also choosing something fresh and flavorful, grown by a local family farmer.

But local is not the best choice 100% of the time. For example, last May during the Eat Local Challenge I ate some apples that were locally grown but had been in cold storage for at least six months. I ate them because I could, according to the rules of the game we set out to play, but they weren't very environmentally friendly, nor very fresh!

When I was at the Eco-Farm conference in January, I heard Gary Paul Nabhan, one of my local eating heroes, speak about food miles. The essential point of his talk was that it's not just about eating local; it's about eating what is appropriate for the place. I sometimes ask myself what that means for me in northern California. Just because we CAN grow ________ (fill in the blank--rice, corn, hothouse tomatoes,...) should we? And if we decide that we shouldn't grow it, is it OK to import it from its native place?

Our food system is so overwhelmingly complex, and it's really hard to get good information about where our food comes from. Heck, one guy wrote a whole book about what's in a twinkie! It's no wonder we simplify things into soundbites like "Eat local" or "Choose organic" or "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." For me, being a locavore is a way to keep my choices manageable while being as true to my values as possible. Every day, I feel disappointed that my culture, economic system, and government are not how I would like them to be, and I feel frustrated that I don't (or think I don't) have the power to make the sweeping changes I believe are necessary. What I really want is food that was grown locally on a small farm by someone I know who pays her (his) workers fairly and treats them well. I want the people that produce my food (and everything I consume, for that matter) to run their businesses as though the earth is equally as important as people and money. I want my food to be produced using only renewable resources and natural, nontoxic substances and I want the process to generate no waste and use minimal energy, and while we're at it, I'd like the production process to actually create some kind of environmental benefit and social benefits as well.  This is a lot to ask. It might cost a bazillion dollars under our current system. But at the very least I wish there were more transparency. I wish I could know more about what I'm buying and who profits from it and who suffered for it so I can make conscious choices about what I actually need.

So when I can't find the perfect thing, I'll stick with Eating Local. It's easier to explain. But I still wonder whether, if I don't explain the rest, I am selling the movement short. Am I making it look like a trend or a gimmick, instead of a powerful movement toward a vibrant food system? And if so, how can I communicate the broader vision without making people lose interest, or worse, roll their eyes and snort at me?

I hope that nobody gives up on the Eat Local movement just because food miles are an incomplete way to measure our food's environmental footprint. I hope we will keep doing what we're doing, and expand in new directions. Let's be willing to tear down our own thinking, if necessary, and rebuild it in a better way. And let's be open to what's next.

I don't have the right answers, but I always admire those who are asking the hard questions. I think it's healthy to challenge our own closely held beliefs. I think we will come out stronger for it.

On that note, check this out--but only if you are willing to dangle your paradigm out the window.
TimesOnline article: "Organic farmers face ruin as rich nations agonise over food miles"

Julie Cummins lives in Oakland, CA and is Director of Education for the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA).

Comments

[plentyofmoxie]

well said! thank you -

[jeanne bee]

well thought out, nothing happens or changes without making some shift great or small. I just don't know how I would survive now if I moved outside of the Swanton radius! I need my strawberry jam!

[John Dickman]

Great thoughts Julie. But like you, I would encourage everyone to eat local, lower our carbon footprint, eat in season and can these wonderful products for use in the off season. I suggest that we should eat like our parents and grand parents use to eat. So as Sara notes, she likes her strawberry jam, I would suggest that we preserve strawberry jam during the season and enjoy it all year long.

[SuzanneM]

As soon as I read your excellent post, I was curious *why* the NZ lamb was considered more energy-efficient than UK lamb.

The op-ed piece states: "Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. "

So, why did the author immediately leap to the conclusion that UK residents should buy NZ lamb? I draw a different conclusion. Let's encourage people to continue to buy from local lamb producers while we create policies to encourage the producers to improve the pasture.

It seems like the author skipped over some practical solutions to resolve issues raised by the report. I don't think the findings put in question the value of eating locally. Rather, they show that conventional farming practices have taken their toll. Long term, it's better to improve the UK pasture rather than give up and shift to NZ lamb.

There's no "quick fix" to solve complex food system problems that have been centuries in the making.

[Julie Cummins]

Jeanne, John: Yes! preserving is a big part of making local eating work year round. I wish I spent more time doing it. Now let's hope somebody figures out a renewable stove fuel someday soon!

Suzanne, thanks for doing that homework. I totally agree with you. Why can't they just work on improving the pasture? There probably are some climate and soil limitations that come into play. Here in California, for example, it would be nearly impossible to have good year-round pasture without feed, because we get no rain from about June to November. But Bill Mollison figured out how to build lush gardens in the desert using permaculture principles. Maybe creative solutions could be found.

I get where the study's coming from though. If it takes roughly 10 pounds of feed to make 1 pound of meat, and you're using imported feed, wouldn't it make more sense to have the animals where there's no need to import feed, and just ship the meat?

However, the research came out of a New Zealand university. Could the study be motivated by the desire to sell more NZ lamb? I think we should take this with a grain of salt. Or a salt lick, as the case may be.

[Kim Cole]

I really enjoyed your post. You gave me lots to think about.

I had read the NYTimes piece as well and have been thinkging about something else McWilliams wrote about. He discusses the fact that many people live in areas that are not condusive to growing food, such as the desert, and we can't expect them to move to more sustainable lands. So, an interesting question is how do we develop a better food system that gets food to these places as sustainably as possible.

I am from Minnesota and totally embraced eating locally when I moved to Oakland 10 years ago as a way to connect with my new home but I have always wondered how I would eat if I still lived in Minnesota. Would I still be such a fan of eating locally and in season? Would I really can and perseve? I am not sure.

My first reaction to NZ lamb being more envirnmentally friendly was why do people in Britain need to eat lamb at all. Is that easy for me to say living in the Bay Area or, maybe, is it important that we learn to do without? I don't know.

[Julie Cummins]

Check out Brian Halweil's comments about the topic on the Worldwatch Institute blog.

[Roxanne Christensen]

A day may come when the local food movement can ease up, become less defensive and less strident about pushing its own merits, regardless of how they are measured. And that is the day when local food production systems are robust enough to hold their own against established large scale mass production agriculture. A new sub-acre farming method called SPIN-Farming is providing a tool for accelarating the development of local food production, so perhaps that day will come sooner than any of us had hoped.

[Tamara]

Or maybe eating lamb if you live in the UK is not practical, can other crops (either animal or veg.) be grown? Or possibly the sheep do not need to be fed grain if the farmers were paid a fair price and were able to produce healthier, less fat lamb with less emphasis on weight gain in lambs. The sheep could probably be raised on the existing land, they just won't be a big and fat.

[GSG]

We are new to the idea ( 2 adults ) and have been thinking about this as well.
I think that for us, the idea is "least harm", with local organic being best, and factory fast food being worst, with many many overlapping rings in the middle.
Grown ethically but far, no factory, clean factory with intent, neighbor's back yard, and "imported, but otherwise impossible, from a mom n' pop" will all work for us, with varying degrees of satisfaction.
We live in an ethnic neighborhood with lots of mom n' pop shops, which we feel is still better than a supermarket for our purposes.
Thanks for the thoughts, I appreciate reading them.

[Michelle Miller]

The Eat Local Challenge has been a wonderful way to introduce people into the concepts of food and agricultural sustainability. "Food miles" as a focus definitely has its limitations, but once people are engaged, they have some momentum to further explore the ideas involved in food sustainability. Every time we grocery shop or eat out, we have an opportunity to act more in line with our thinking and intentions. As Pollan pointed out in the Omnivore's Dilemma, we are hard-wired to wonder what to have for dinner, so I expect people to continue investigating the benefits of local food beyond the food miles measure. Setting parameters such as food miles is simply one place to start and we have more than 20 years of thinking and experience and research about sustainable agriculture for people to draw from. Food miles gives us a way to score our success and make the effort a game. That is powerful!

[Julie Cummins]

Those interested in the details of the lamb study should check out this article at ethicurean.com, which picks apart the NZ study. As in any study, assumptions have to be made (such as what carbon emissions to assume), and studies motivated by industry profit are known for choosing the assumptions that will work out in their favor.
read the post here

[Richard R]

I think we need to take a system approach to eating locally. When I lived in Montpelier, Vermont, I was easily able to whip up a summer cheeseburger and vegetable dinner with almost all of the ingredients coming from less than 25 miles away by shopping at the local co-op. I now live in downtown Washington, DC, and to do the same takes more time and effort, often involving more than one destination.

As part of this systems thinking, perhaps we can begin to see the solution. The fact that our food comes from thousands of miles away isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s that we move our food over this distance by burning fossil fuels. Would we be less guilt-ridden if the global movement of coffee beans or spices came to us via mule trains and wind-powered ships as it once did? Perhaps we should be focusing not on how far our food has traveled, but how it is shipped.

We have to reconfigure our transportation systems to run on renewable energy. Those who see technology as the savior of our environmental crises will disagree, but these sustainable transportation systems are those that existed before the advent of fossil fuels. People have always consumed non-local foods, but they were transported by foot, animal, river, or sea. Now we’re talking “slow food.” It also meant that what could be transported long distances was limited or necessitated minimal processing (drying, fermentation, etc.)

Speaking of systems, I do find it curious that there is significant buzz and concern about the environmental impact of our food, but the rest of the global supply chains don’t generate the same angst and guilt. How come we aren’t focused on the fact that almost EVERYTHING we consume comes from thousands of miles away. “Stuff miles?” This computer I’m typing at, the clothes I am wearing, the car I am driving, the subway car I ride to work. Of course, the “Buy American” campaign was never about sustainability, but it was a localism of sorts. One in which local (and national) economies were dependent on producing for the needs of local (and national) populations. Why are we challenging each other to do without spices, or coffee, or dried cranberries from afar, but not challenging ourselves to do without all of these other consumer goods, or heck, the non-local fuels themselves?

The food miles focus seems a very Anglo-American project, where the enjoyment of food seems an unnecessary frivolity. Do other cultures play this game? The “foodometer” video linked to this blog tries to make me feel upset that food production consumes 20% of the world’s energy. So? It’s the other 80% that we should be questioning – flying around the world to laze on a beach at some other latitude; living in communities that require us to get into a car to do anything; “climate control”; supporting a war machine that’s the world’s largest consumer of oil, etc. If the worst thing we were doing was enjoying kiwi fruit a few times a year flown in from New Zealand, the world would be a miraculous place.

I suspect the popularity of the “eat local” movement (of which I count myself a member) is that it makes us feel empowered because it asks us to change our personal behavior, which we can do. But in order to change the systems that underlie our production and consumption we need to engage in a discussion of values and priorities with others and work out cultural and political solutions to address these concerns. Admittedly, that’s a lot more work and the prospects for change uncertain.

[Jen@BigBinder]

I have nothing profound or educated to add. Just gratitude for a post well done. Thank you.

[Gina]

Other factors must weigh in. I read an article recently on the takeover of wild rice cultivation from its native upper-midwest waters to mass farms in Northern California and the south. I would be buying local by buying it from Northern California farms, but I don't know as that's the best purchase.