Eating locally is NOT always the best environmental choice

Eating locally is NOT always the best environmental choice

"What's the Ideal Distance from Farm to Fork?" asks U of T geography professor Pierre Desrochers.

This is an article from U of T magazine, one of my alma maters.

Promoting food grown by local farmers is worthy, but is based on a faulty premise according to Prof Desrochers.

"While a New Zealand apple eaten in Morrison Hall represents more "food miles" (the distance travelled from "farm to fork") than the indigenous McIntosh - it doesn't mean that the Ontario apple is the better environmental choices, says Desrochers. New Zealand apples are grown during our winter months so they don't need to spend long periods in energy-guzzling cold storage, he says.

According to Desrochers, buying locally grown but economically uncompetitive products almost never reduces greenhouse gases. In the U.S. 80% of the energy used to get food from the farm to the table occurs during food production. Transportation accounts for less than 10%

'Long-distance food transportation by highly efficient diesel container ships represents only a tiny percentage of the total energy used in agricultural productions,' says Desrochers, adding that cold storage or greenhouses use much more energy.

'North Americans somehow forget that we have seasons.'

I am an environmentalist, and I feel no guilt about buying tropical fruits that are imported here in Canada. I also buy seasonal things that are locally grown as much as possible. Québec strawberries, blueberries and other field berries are fabulous.
However, organic, fair-trade bananas I buy constantly as well as other tropical fruits that I get organic as much as possible. I am convinced that there is actually a positive value in terms of my environmental footprint in doing so. These fruits are grown on trees, which are hugely beneficial to the earth's environment. The trees provide habitat and nourishment to much wildlife. Also, their production provides a much more sustainable economic resource to other populations of the world that would otherwise cut down the trees for other types of agriculture or economic activity.

Of course, when I'm in Costa Rica, I don't buy anything imported because there is no need to, but when I'm in Canada I do and I feel good about it too!

So yes, eat local seasonal food, but an imported fair trade banana is still much better than a local piece of meat/animal or grain product.