
Transport makes up only 6% of the greenhouse gas emissions from food - shafyy
https://blog.yeticheese.com/eating-local-has-tiny-environmental-impact/
======
Wowfunhappy
> Arguments like these try to shift away the spotlight from big companies who
> collectively make up a large chunk of the greenhouse gas emissions to
> individuals.

This is the key problem, with “eat local” and all similar initiatives.

Yes, reducing emissions by tiny percentages is still a _good thing_. But too
often, by focusing the conversation on these small individual actions, we miss
the forest for the trees.

~~~
beloch
Missing the forest for the trees is a very human thing to do. The real problem
is that we stubbornly ignore the forest even when we know its there.

e.g. Many environmentalists think that, if we can just stop building
pipelines, fuel will become more expensive and people (usually other, poorer
people) will drive less. This attitude helped prevent a key pipeline in Canada
(Energy East) from being built. This pipeline would have sent oil from Western
Canada to Eastern Canada, which currently imports a significant portion of
it's oil by tanker from foreign countries. Now Alberta oil is being shipped
_West_ , put on panamax tankers in Vancouver, sailed through the Panama Canal,
and then up to the East coast of Canada. There it is bought for the same
prices as foreign oil by Canadian refineries. All that's happened is some oil
companies are making less money per barrel because of transport expenses. This
wasteful route hasn't impacted fuel prices in Eastern Canada _at all_.

The forest in this case, is that people need to buy smaller, more efficient
vehicles or EV's, and build communities that require less driving. However, I
have no doubt that I will get an earful from someone for daring to suggest
that an oil pipeline could be a good thing for the environment. To be clear, I
am specifically saying that the Energy East pipeline would have been more
environmentally friendly than shipping oil from Western to Eastern Canada via
the Panama canal.

Too much of popular environmentalism is utterly unscientific and harmful to
the environment. It's not just the "eat local" fad.

~~~
lotsofpulp
> Too much of popular environmentalism is utterly unscientific and harmful to
> the environment. It's not just the "eat local" fad.

Because paying higher prices is okay, especially if you can afford it and
others can’t.

But the real problem is excess consumption, and the solution is eating less
overall, which no one wants to do. Reducing quality of life is the forest, but
who wants to do that for future generations’ benefit?

~~~
Wowfunhappy
We live in a capitalist society. You reduce demand by increasing costs. The
rich are the least affected. That's just how it works.

I'm broadly in favor of making society more equitable, but I'm wary of the
idea that we can solve both at once. The purveyors of the "Green New Deal"
disagree with me, and I'm not at all opposed to what they're doing—but I worry
that, the more problems you try to address at once, the harder it is to reach
broad consensus. We need to fix climate change.

A simple carbon tax, by the way, could also alleviate this problem, by
distributing the proceeds back to the populace.

~~~
rvense
> We live in a capitalist society. You reduce demand by increasing costs. The
> rich are the least affected. That's just how it works.

Maybe we could work on that somehow, seeing as how the rich you are, the
bigger your environmental footprint tends to. Someone who's spending all the
money on food vs. someone who has to try really, really hard to spend all
their money.

Anecdote: a few years ago, I was talking about summer holidays with my boss -
I was going by coach to Berlin; he was taking his family to Japan to ski and
would be going by helicopter daily from his hotel to the better, remote
slopes. Maybe a 50% carbon tax would've meant I stayed at home entirely, but
he wasn't the type to worry about money at all, so... yeah.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Of course, if the proceeds of the carbon tax were distributed back to the
populace, and if you stayed home and your boss flew his helicopter, the extra
money he spent would end up in your pocket.

Actually, I'm of the opinion that when the government has more money to spend
on programs for citizens, society as a whole _anyway_ , so I don't think it
even matters so much what we do with the revenue (as much as some programs are
certainly better than others).

But, I don't like to use this argument, because I know a lot of people
disagree about the benefits of government programs / wealth redistribution,
and I would really really really like for addressing climate change to not be
a political issue. Unless you flat-out think Climate Change is a hoax, there
is no reason for us not to tax carbon.

------
hwillis
This is true for meat and many grains, but not really for other foods. There
are two MAJORLY misleading caveats to the data as presented:

1\. These emissions include semi-permanent sinks (where carbon is converted
into dirt or trees that don't need to be cut down annually), but not the fact
that carbon is absorbed to grow the plants. Unlike transport, this carbon
doesn't simply appear. If you take this into account it reduces the overall
carbon from Ag by ~20%.

2\. Fruits and vegetables have MUCH more energy spent on transport, over 50%
in some cases once you account for CO2 absorption. Potatoes as well. See page
61 (fig S13) of the supplement on the original paper:
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2018/05/30/...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2018/05/30/360.6392.987.DC1/aaq0216-Poore-
SM-revision1.pdf)

Meats and milk (and to a lesser extent rice- methane from the water paddies)
are overwhelmingly the largest cause of Ag GHG emissions and why transport
seems to play such a small role. It's the only case that buying locally
doesn't make a difference.

~~~
shafyy
Naturally, this figure will vary from food type to food type. As you've
pointed out, this doesn't change the fact that many people don't realize how
much bigger the effect of avoiding meat and dairy is vs. buying locally
produced foods.

I also mentioned some more caveats in the article, e.g. transport does matter
for goods such as berries and green beans, which are highly perishable and
therefore transported by air planes.

------
tdeck
Disappointingly it seems that organic farming isn't better for the environment
either. It relies heavily on the byproducts of animal agriculture (i.e.
manure), which is the most inefficient and polluting segment of our food
supply. Even though people who eat organic may tend to eat less meat, that's
not sustainable if their food supply is dependent on the meat-producing
infrastructure remaining in place.

Organic farming also requires more land than non-organic farming, which means
more forest and wetlands cleared for agriculture to produce the same amount of
food.

Here's an interesting study on the topic:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09596...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652617309666)

~~~
488643689
Worth noting, we're actually drowning in cow shit. In Germany the meat lobby
is actually pushing for disposing even more into the grounds, conventional or
ecological farming. We could reduce meat production a lot, before running out
of shit... On top, most crops are grown for animal consumption anyway.

~~~
rvense
As I understand it the problem is again distribution. If German cows are
anything like Danish pigs, they eat a lot of Brazilian soy. But nobody's
shipping shit back to South America. So they get fertilizer from mines.

Maybe it's the pigs and cows who should be told to eat local?

------
kdamica
I remember reading a study once that concluded that buying from a farmers
market is only emissions negative if the farmer lives within a few miles of
the market. Ship transport is mind bogglingly efficient.

~~~
bb2018
One rule of thumb I think about is that the cost of oil needed to
manufacture/ship an item cannot exceed the cost of that item.

So, if a plastic straw costs two cents, then at most about 1/200th a gallon of
oil/gas was used to both make the plastic and ship it to wherever you are.

It is very easy to look at the visual volume of straws or bags and feel like
it is a lot of plastic - but in reality it is the equivalent amount of oil
usage as driving a few more blocks.

------
contingencies
The proportion of people who will change habits based upon objective
statistical and extrapolated moral imperative arguments is small.

The proportion of people who will change habits based upon convenience is
high.

In addition, food production and distribution systems are immensely
heterogeneous. They tend to be predictable in structure based upon land use
patterns (urban planning). Apartment dwellers spend less on transport and more
on packaging, but don't grow much food or raise animals. With small family
units, cook-for-one kitchens and duplicate appliances, waste is highest.
Suburbia dwellers spend more on transport but might grow food and raise
animals or at least keep chickens. Waste is also high, often due to spoilage.
Villages and rural dwelling people may very well produce all their own food
and may walk everywhere, with no transport. Waste is lower, since crops may be
picked or animals slaughtered only when required.

Since changing people's lifestyles to a sustainable reality requires drastic
lifestyle changes and is therefore untenable, I believe the key to
significantly reducing resource wastage in the food distribution globally is
more efficient distribution and the deduplication of resources (kitchens,
appliances, grocery stores, etc.). Obviously this can be sold based on
convenience, but cuts across tightly held beliefs around individualism,
identity and tradition (amongst others). For various reasons such as
population density, social norms, mobile payment penetration and legal and
regulatory environments, I believe the future technologies in this space will
be set in the world's highest density cities in Asia, and then re-exported to
a lagging west.

~~~
Ghjklov
>The proportion of people who will change habits based upon convenience is
high.

Good point. Another key thing is economics. Nice vegan eco-friendly locally
sourced sausage there buddy. 10 bucks? No thanks.

If the people with power to do so cared about animals and the climate, they'd
do everything they can to make sure their vegan products are affordable to
poor people. They need to be at least cheaper than the meat products. But that
does not seem to be the case.

------
jsingleton
Our World in Data have an excellent analysis on this topic as usual.

> Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local

[https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-
local](https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local)

------
mikedilger
Meat production produces methane, not CO2. People yearn for simpler data and
try to create equivalence (CO2e), but you cannot simply combine them without a
loss of understanding/meaning. Methane is much more potent, but also more
transient in the atmosphere than CO2 is. It stays in the atmosphere about 12
years.

Fossil-fuel production actually emits more methane than meat production does
(but meat production is number two and a very big slice). So by cutting down
on fossil fuels you will have a bigger impact on solving the methane problem
than going vegetarian, and you'll also be solving the longer term CO2 problem.
But every bit counts. Vegetarianism (or near-vegetarianism) is quite healthy
too.

If we stopped meat production entirely right now, in a few decades we'd be
back at ancient levels and the temperature would drop accordingly. But if you
are worried about a climate apocalypse that our children and grandchildren are
going to have to deal with, going vegetarian now is going to have little
impact on that problem. CO2 is still the bigger and more long-term problem.

~~~
andrekandre
method though breaks down into co2 and water eventually, so its still a
problem in the long term

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane)

~~~
mikedilger
You are correct that it breaks down into co2, but it is not part of the long
term problem.

The CO2 from methane breakdown was sourced from the atmosphere in the first
place. And it goes back into the atmosphere. It's part of the permanent
surface-atmosphere CO2 cycle.

Atmospheric CO2 -> Grass -> Ruminant animal -> Methane -> Atmospheric CO2

Fossil fuels, OTOH, bring up CO2 from deep in the earth where it has been
sequestered for eons.

If we ate less meat and turned the pasture into woodland, we could sequester
quite a lot of CO2 on the order of 50 years or so. Longer if we buried the
wood. And I'm not against that.

But it seems silly to me to focus on these minor hacks to surface cycles for
temporary gains when the clear long-term problem is fossil fuel. We need to
keep focusing on fossil fuel.

~~~
andrekandre
> The CO2 from methane breakdown was sourced from the atmosphere in the first
> place. And it goes back into the atmosphere. It's part of the permanent
> surface-atmosphere CO2 cycle.

intersting, i didnt know that

> But it seems silly to me to focus on these minor hacks to surface cycles for
> temporary gains when the clear long-term problem is fossil fuel. We need to
> keep focusing on fossil fuel.

definitely, agree 100%

------
harimau777
It seems to me that something that might make a difference on greenhouse gas
emissions from food and that I don't see activists working on is making
vegetarian and vegan diets more accessible. For example:

\- Developing recipes that a palatable, convenient, relatively cheap, and
which meet people's nutritional goals.

\- Teach people to cook those recipes.

~~~
dorena
I completely agree! I think we should go further and teach cooking at school.
Finally kids would learn something they could use every day :)

------
vram22
Just saw this related book today:

The Carbon Farming Solution:

[http://www.perennialsolutions.org/shop/the-carbon-farming-
so...](http://www.perennialsolutions.org/shop/the-carbon-farming-solution-
signed)

Author is Eric Toensmeier.

From his about page:

[http://carbonfarmingsolution.com/bio](http://carbonfarmingsolution.com/bio)

Eric Toensmeier is the award-winning author of Paradise Lot and Perennial
Vegetables, and the co-author of Edible Forest Gardens. He is an appointed
lecturer at Yale University, a Senior Biosequestration Fellow with Project
Drawdown, and an international trainer. He has studied useful perennial plants
and their roles in agroforestry systems for over two decades.He is the author
of The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and
Regenerative Agricultural Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food
Security.

------
jiofih
This ignores so many aspects before jumping to a conclusion. You have to take
into account the “packaging” and “processing” environmental cost as well, plus
the fact that local, organic farmers will also have a significantly lower
impact than what’s shown, which is 90% comprised of large scale industrial
farming.

~~~
netrus
Why would that be? I would imagine "large scale industrial farming" to be
quite efficient - animals don't get a lot of space there and are optimized to
turn the food they are given into as many meat calories as possible. It's
horrible for the animals, but efficient.

Caring about the environment is about more than climate change, but if the
target is to tackle climate change, the answer is NO meat, not local organic
meat (and dairy).

~~~
jiofih
It’s efficient in terms of output, but not necessarily environmentally
friendly. The methods used, monoculture, the volume of waste generated, and
the chemicals necessary to cope with it all can be damaging to a level much
higher than adding up individual small farmers.

------
LatteLazy
We've decided as a species to do nothing about our emissions and let what
happens happen. So who cares what does or doesn't make a difference?

~~~
mikedilger
The world has been reducing greenhouse gas emissions since at least 1990 when
it was 6 trillion tonnes of CO2e per year. We're currently at about 4.4
trillion tonnes of CO2e per year.

We have an ambitious goal of getting down to 1 trillion (or even 250 million)
tonnes of CO2e per year by 2050 because of how bad things will get if we
don't.

As game theory (and the tragedy of the commons) would suggest, there will be
cheaters. But those cheaters are not overwhelming the overall downward trend.

------
mrfusion
I wonder if the tesla semi will make a difference?

------
MperorM
I originally interpreted the title as 'eating locally has a tiny environmental
footprint" which is opposite of the point the article is trying to make.

I'm not sure what the rules about changing a title is, but the article makes
an excellent point and it would be a shame if people who don't read the
article get it wrong like I did.

~~~
dang
Ok, we've replaced the title with what is effectively the subtitle.

~~~
shafyy
Thanks! I can see how this new title is better :-)

------
MintelIE
Poorly written blog post. Author even skips analysis of their own opening
graph.

~~~
Jolter
Can’t spell “dairy” either.

~~~
marmaduke
I read it as written by non native English speakers. Diary passes the spell-
checker (though they have a few words in their posts which don't).

------
Shivetya
Really all they eventually say is eat less dairy and meat. As in industrial
meat and dairy farming impact the environment more that vegetable crops.

Nothing else to take away from it. Pretty much a pointless "well duh" article
with an end comment that we need to do less travel by road and air. Well that
will never happen and another pandemic will force more on the roads separately
instead of sharing bus, train, or plane. However BEV will pretty much solve
the majority of the pollution side but it will increase miles traveled.

~~~
acangiano
A large percentage of the population going vegan and working from home
becoming the norm for suitable jobs, would be game changers in terms of
pollution.

