Think that eating local will help save the planet? Think again. Most emissions come from food production, not transportation

Supported by

About this content

Cecilia NowellWed 7 Jun 2023 09.00 EDT

• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/07/is-eating-local-better-environment

In June 2005, four women spoke at a San Francisco celebration of the first World Environment Day in North America. The Bay Area locals – Jen Maiser, Jessica Prentice, Sage Van Wing and Dede Sampson – invited the audience to join them in a local food challenge: spending the next month eating only food produced within 100 miles (160km) of their homes.

Although the concept of eating locally was not new – the farm-to-table movement had kicked off in the 1960s and 70s as hippies protested against processed foods and Alice Waters opened the first farm-to-table restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California – these women gave it new life with a new name, calling themselves “locavores”. In his 2006 book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Bay Area local Michael Pollan also advocated for the local food movement, and by 2007 the Oxford American Dictionary had dubbed “locavore” its word of the year.

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.578.0_en.html#goog_668197126

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.578.0_en.html#goog_924273476

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.578.0_en.html#goog_594146167Outrage as anti-LGBTQ+ protest at California schoolboard turns violent

Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that eating local food is better for the environment. But in recent years, a series of studies have shown that eating locally might not be as environmentally impactful – in and of itself – as advocates once hoped. In fact, research shows that the carbon footprint of transporting food is relatively small, and that it’s more important to focus on how your food is produced. Eating local can be a part of that, but it doesn’t have to be.

What’s the evidence for eating local?

In 1994, the UK-based Sustainable Agriculture Food and Environment Alliance (now called Sustain) published The Food Miles Report – the Dangers of Long-Distance Food Transport, which offered scientific backing for the burgeoning local food movement. It argued that the long-distance transportation of food was only possible because of cheap, non-renewable fossil fuels that allowed transnational corporations to “exploit land, labour and resources in developing countries for the production of raw commodities to which they add considerable mark-ups before sale in the North”.

“As you can perceive in the title, food miles were initially considered (almost by definition) as a big threat and contributor to climate change,” Laura Enthoven, a PhD researcher in agricultural economics at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium and author of a recent review of local food systems research, said in an email. The farther food had to travel, the more fossil fuel was used and greenhouse gases emitted.

Those emissions are especially high for food transported by airplane: food that is flown is responsible for up to 50 times as much carbon dioxide as food transported by boat. Fortunately, very little food travels by air (think perishables that need to be eaten soon after harvest, like asparagus and berries). Many fruits and vegetables with a longer shelf life, like apples and broccoli, can be shipped by boat, truck or rail, whose food miles produce far fewer emissions.

Is it the best way to reduce food-related emissions?

In the 2000s, scientists began conducting full life cycle assessments of food supply chains – looking at how much greenhouse gases are emitted not just when food is transported, but also when crops are planted and fertilized, animals are taken out to pasture or kept in confinement, and food scraps end up in the garbage. What they found was that transporting food made up a relatively small percentage of food’s total carbon footprint.

In a 2018 paper, a team of researchers from the UK and Switzerland found that only 1% to 9% of food’s emissions come from packaging, transport and retail. The vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions – 61% – come during production, while food is still on the farm. That’s supported by research published in the early 2000s in the US and Europe.

What we eat and how it is produced makes more impact on our food carbon footprint than purely where it comes from in terms of distance

Researcher Laura Enthoven

“What we eat and how it is produced makes more impact on our food carbon footprint than purely where it comes from in terms of distance,” said Enthoven.

The greatest source of emissions can vary among foods. In many crops, it’s the fertilizer and pesticides required to grow large quantities of food on industrial farms. In beef, for example, less than 1% of emissions come from transportation while the vast majority come just from feeding cattle (and their methane-heavy burps).

Scientists are still grappling with how to define food miles: some only take into account the emissions of transporting food while others consider the full life cycle of producing food in one region before it is moved to another. As recently as last year, a study in Nature Food found that food miles accounted for a significantly larger share of the food system’s emissions than had been previously thought by taking into account the emissions from transporting fertilizers, machinery and animal feed to grow that food.skip past newsletter promotion

Sign up to Down to Earth

Free weekly newsletter

The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential

https://www.google.com/recaptcha/api2/anchor?ar=1&k=6LdzlmsdAAAAALFH63cBVagSFPuuHXQ9OfpIDdMc&co=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlZ3VhcmRpYW4uY29tOjQ0Mw..&hl=en&type=image&v=sNQO7xVld1CuA2hfFHvkpVL-&theme=light&size=invisible&badge=bottomright&cb=pz6d9sm42c8sPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

after newsletter promotion

So is eating local worth it?

Does the research mean there are no benefits to eating locally? “It depends,” both Enthoven and Mike Hamm, a professor emeritus and founding director of the Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems, said separately. Eating locally can be a means of supporting farms that use more environmentally friendly production practices, such as minimizing their use of fossil fuel-rich pesticides and fertilizers.

https://d5add2b05e5d2e2f516ca6511320a446.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

“I’ve often said the whole idea of local foods wasn’t about just reducing food miles,” said John Ikerd, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri. It’s also a solution for people “looking for an alternative to the industrial food system”.

Ikerd recalls the farm-to-table movement and hippy-led rebellion against industrial food beginning shortly after Rachel Carson’s indictment of pesticides, Silent Spring, was published in 1962. That led to the birth of the organic food movement, which sought to produce food without greenhouse gas-emitting fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals. But as more corporations began producing organic-labeled food, Ikerd saw consumers turn to local farms where they might have a better sense of how their food was grown – and more peace of mind that farmers were using regenerative agricultural practices.

“Well-designed, inclusive, local food initiatives can have a positive impact,” said Enthoven. But she cautions that consumers can fall into a “local trap”, a term coined in a 2007 article by researchers at the University of Washington, if they “believe that the whole system should switch to local only, which is not per se more sustainable or inclusive”.

Although many local farms tout themselves as ethical alternatives to industrial agriculture, there’s no rule saying they have to be organic or worker-friendly. In fact, many small farms are exempt from paying the federal minimum wage and US Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety oversight and investigations.

Local farms can be important alternatives, especially when there are disruptions in supply chains, as occurred at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. But “we need a diversity of scale in our production system across product types,” said Hamm, especially as we look at ways to feed 8 billion people in the era of climate crisis.

Elizabeth WeiseDoyle Rice

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/06/07/see-wildfire-smoke-map-of-us-canada/70293572007/

USA TODAY

0:00

1:03

https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.577.0_en.html#goog_1988959418

Canada is on fire. On Tuesday there were more than 400 wildfires burning across the country, 238 of them out-of-control. Smoke and unhealthy air quality levels from the conflagration have blanketed multiple Canadian provinces, much of the Great Lakes region and parts of the northeastern United States.

While forest fires are a natural part of the ecosystem of Canada’s boreal forests, the size, ferocity and number of fires this year is decidedly abnormal. Most of the country is expected to be under high to extreme risk for much of the wildfire season, which stretches from May to September.

“Climate change is real and having a huge impact on Canadians right now with forest fires burning across the country,” tweeted Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former climate minister.

https://e7dbd7c420700784ad64a557ee78ec27.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

On Monday Canada’s minister for emergency preparedness, Bill Blair, said the nation is seeing images of fires that “are some of the most severe ever witnessed in Canada.”

Here’s what to know:

How is smoke from the Canada fires affecting US air quality?

On Tuesday the federal AirNow fire and smoke map listed Albany, NY; Bennington, Vermont; Hartford, Conn.; and parts of New York City as “UNHEALTHY” and advised residents to “reduce activity or consider going indoors.”

https://e7dbd7c420700784ad64a557ee78ec27.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

Due to the smoke in the air, “children and older adults, as well as people with heart or lung disease, should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion,” the weather service in Albany, New York, warned. “Exposure to elevated levels of fine particles such as wood smoke can increase the likelihood of respiratory symptoms in sensitive individuals and aggravate heart or lung disease.”

Canada wildfire smoke creates eerie glowing sunrises, lower temps in US

The smoky skies have helped reduce temperatures across much of the mid-Atlantic. Due to an area of low pressure that’s hovering offshore, along with an area of high pressure over Canada, a northerly flow of air was funneling the smoke south into the U.S. from Canada, AccuWeather said. This was keeping temperatures cooler than average, as the smoke filters out the blazing June sunshine.For example, the weather service in Washington, D.C., said in an online forecast discussion Tuesday that “temperatures this morning have been running 5-8 degrees cooler than forecast due to the smoke in the atmosphere.”

The smoke is even giving the sky, sun and moon some unusual colors.  

In addition to the milky, hazy skies, the wildfire smoke has created strange visual appearances of the sun and moon. Tuesday morning, the smoke “transformed the morning sunrise across parts of the East into an orange, photo-worthy haze,” AccuWeather reported.

US Air Quality Index

https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/usat/sf-q1a2z323ad14e2.min.html

Why are there so many fires in Canada?

Rising temperatures, prolonged droughts and changing rain patterns are making many of North America’s forests more prone to fire. Add on top of that the fact that temperatures at higher latitudes are increasing more than at low latitudes and it makes for horrific and historic levels of destruction.

https://e7dbd7c420700784ad64a557ee78ec27.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

“We’re seeing events that are unknown in the historical record,” said Robert Scheller, a professor of forestry at North Carolina State University. “It’s hard to talk about without painting a grim picture.”

“It has been record-breakingly hot and dry across much of central and western Canada and now in recent days across eastern Canada as well,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Conditions there are “highly anomalous,” Swain said. Typically early to mid-spring would be the peak of seasonal dryness, with late spring and summer rains coming later and causing northern forests to “green up” and become less prone to fire. “So far this year that green up has been attenuated because it’s so dry and so warm,” he said.

Is climate change to blame for the fires?

While it’s impossible to say that any one fire or any one season is specifically linked to an increasingly warm planet, the trends show a strong signal, said Scheller.

https://e7dbd7c420700784ad64a557ee78ec27.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

READ MORE:Latest climate change news from USA TODAY

How does climate change affect you?:Subscribe to the weekly Climate Point newsletter

“We have unusually dry conditions and heat pulses in Canada,” he said.

That fits with data showing temperatures are rising faster in higher latitudes. In January, Howard Diamond, NOAA’s climate science program manager, said the global rise in temperature is unmistakable. “In some parts of the world, particularly at the higher latitudes towards the poles, the warming is much more accelerated.”

Wildfire, smoke map for US, Canada

https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/usat/sf-q1a2z323ad14e2.min.html

See more wildfire and smoke information and data here.

How a ‘hot drought’ is helping fuel the fires

Conditions in Canada are an example of something that has come to be called “hot droughts,” Scheller said.

“It’s not just lack of precipitation, it’s lack of precipitation plus these higher temperatures that really dry the soil and fuels out.”

https://e7dbd7c420700784ad64a557ee78ec27.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

There have always been heat waves and there have always been droughts. What climate change adds is increased variability and increasing extremes. So in Canada, there are not only increased odds of drought but also increased odds of heat waves.

“If you roll the dice and they both come up, then you’ve got a hot drought,” Scheller said.

Does this mean the US fire season will be bad too?

Canada’s bad fire season won’t necessarily be repeated in the United States, thanks to different weather patterns further south.

There could also be a difference between higher and lower elevations, said Swain. Especially in California, which had seen heavy rain and snow in the previous six months, the legacy of the wet winter should mean a milder-than-average fire season in the mountains.

“This may be a year where there’s more fire risk in the valleys than the mountain peaks throughout the West,” he said.

https://e7dbd7c420700784ad64a557ee78ec27.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

Lots of rain has meant plants and chaparral have grown extraordinarily well. “People have reported waist- or shoulder-high grass and brush this year when in some cases it was barely ankle high in the drought,” he said.

That means there’s a lot more fuel to burn this year than in previous years. Fire danger could emerge in July and August, possibly peaking in August and October depending on when the winter rains arrive.

US weather warnings

https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/usat/sf-q1a2z323ad14e2.min.html

New $99 Tac Drone Is A Must For Seniors“My grandson loved this”Daily Gadget Finds|

Ad

Get Offer

Cardiologist: Too Much Belly Fat? Do This Before BedHealthy Guru|

Ad

Watch Now

Is ED Becoming Obsolete for Senior Men? Learn More!ED|

Ad

Cardiologist In Winthrop : Belly Fat? Do This TodayThis Vegetable Will Kill Your Belly And Arm Fat Overnight!Drink This Before Bed, Watch Your Body Fat Melt Like Crazy! (Try Tonight)Health Journal|

Ad

Learn More

Weight Loss After 55 Comes Down To This Simple Greek MethodHealth Truth Finder|

Ad

You May Not Know This About ED.Dealing with ED is difficult enough. Don’t fall for these 5 myths.Giddy|

Ad

Learn More

Active Seniors: The Secret to Foot Pain Relief Finally RevealedAmRelieve|

Ad

Learn More

Incredible $89 Smartwatch Is Taking the US by StormRival|

Ad

Learn More

New Tinnitus Discovery Leaves Experts FuriousHealthy Guru|

Ad

Read More

Chuck Norris In His 80s Says Try This Once A Day For More EnergyRoundhouse Provisions|

Ad

Deal of the Day

Get $700 Off This Popular Tuft & Needle Mattress TodayREVIEWEDView DealRecommendations are independently chosen by our editors. Purchases you make through our links may earn us a commission.

Recommended

Unlimited Tomorrow is pioneering the future of prostheticsSTORY FROM SIEMENS

Create the perfect lawn, starting with our lawn trimmer blades!polaplus|

Ad

Shop Now

Cardiologist: Too Much Belly Fat? Do This Before BedHealthy Guru|

Ad

Watch Now

More Stories

Canada wildfires worsen air pollution in Midwest and northeastern USNEWS

Bags of human remains found in search for missing youthNEWS

What is a red flag warning? What to know about dangerous weather alertNEWS

Boyfriend of losing beauty pageant contestant smashes winner’s crownNEWS

Is ED Becoming Obsolete for Senior Men? Learn More!ED|

Ad

You May Not Know This About ED.Giddy|

Ad

Learn More

Cardiologist In Winthrop : Belly Fat? Do This TodayHealth Journal|

Ad

Learn More

New Tinnitus Discovery Leaves Experts FuriousHealthy Guru|

Ad

Read More

More Stories

Naples woman spots Florida panther staring back at her through glass doorNEWS

‘Rise of the Beasts’ review: ‘Transformers’ does retro nostalgia rightENTERTAINMENT

Stunned nurse: I caught ‘witches holding a carcass-eating ritual’ on my security cameraNEWS

Why you need to visit the ski town where plastic bags are bannedTRAVEL

322

Joshua Zitser

Tue, June 6, 2023 at 3:55 AM PDT·3 min read

• A pod of orcas attacked a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar, ripping off both of its rudders.
• The sailor said it felt as though the orcas were throwing the yacht around “like a rag doll.”
• There have been 20 incidents of orca attacks in the Strait of Gibraltar in the past month alone.

A British sailor had the rudders of his yacht ripped off by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar, the latest of several killer-whale incidents in the area in recent weeks.

Iain Hamilton is now marooned in Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory on Spain’s south coast, after a pod of five orcas attacked his yacht, he told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program on Monday.

He said he was sailing 20 miles west off the coast when he noticed a fin near his boat, followed by a series of increasingly jerky bumps.

“There was a very large whale pushing along the back of the boat, trying to bite the rudder,” he told BBC Radio 4, adding that the big orca, along with four smaller killer whales, repeatedly bumped against the yacht.

“Then one of them managed to take off the rudder,” he said.

Hamilton said it was “quite concerning” to be left with only one rudder, but the situation turned from bad to worse when the second rudder was torn off.

“We had no mechanism for steering the boat,” he said. Hamilton added that the orcas “pushed us around like a rag doll.”

The sailor told Radio 4 that he felt as though the orcas were being “almost playful” rather than aggressive, adding that they would have had the strength to destroy his yacht quickly if they wished to.

He also said the killer whales moved in a way that seemed “choreographed, almost, like synchronized swimming,” according to the radio broadcast.

“They seemed to be playing with the rudders, and just inadvertently rendering the boat very vulnerable and in a fairly dangerous situation,” Hamilton said in the interview.

It is unclear how the attack ended, or how the yacht got back to shore.

Hamilton went on to tell Radio 4 that the scale of orca attacks on the Strait of Gibraltar is far bigger than one might expect, referring to the Atlantic Orca Working Group’s findings that there have been 20 incidents involving killer whales in the region in the past month alone.

Insider’s Isobel Van Hagen previously reported on an incident last month in which a pod of orcas rammed a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar.

In a post on her blog, April Boyes, who was aboard the yacht, wrote a first-hand account of the event. She described the boat filling with water as the orcas “completely destroyed” the rudder.

Researchers are trying to work out why killer whales are increasingly targeting boats near Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, with one theory pointing to a single, female orca who may have been traumatized by a previous interaction.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The naturalist who captured the photo said the orca seemed uninterested in the deer; however, the deer was likely intimidated by the whale.

03:4631:31

• https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/deer-swims-past-orca-battleship-island-san-juan/281-84d3d8e2-a296-442c-a383-53d783ab5634

Author: KING 5 Staff

Published: 4:02 PM PDT June 6, 2023

Updated: 7:02 PM PDT June 6, 2023

 

SAN JUAN COUNTY, Wash. — Photos snapped near San Juan Island show a swimming black-tail deer crossing paths with a Bigg’s orca. 

A naturalist, Sam Murphy with Island Adventures Whale Watching and the Pacific Whale Watching Association (PWWA), captured the photos on Sunday, June 4 at Battleship Island. Murphy didn’t see the deer initially, according to PWWA Executive Director Erin Gless, who shared the photos with KING 5. 

“She said that the whale swam right by and didn’t seem interested in the deer at all,” Gless wrote. “Sam didn’t notice the deer until she was looking at her pictures afterward, making for a fun surprise. Probably not enough meat/fat on a deer’s bones to tempt these whales, who are used to eating seals and sea lions, but would probably be an intimidating experience for the deer, I’m sure!” 

Deer swims past Bigg’s orca off Battleship Island

• 
• 
• 

1/3×

Sam Murphy, Island Adventures Whale Watching, Pacific Whale Watching Association

Bigg’s killer whales are also known as transients, with a home range that spans from Alaska to Northern California, according to the Georgia Strait Alliance. In recent years, the whales have been spotted more and more often in the Salish Sea, with sightings reported year-round. The orcas are apex predators and hunt other marine mammals in groups, including sea lions, seals, and other types of whales, including juvenile gray and humpback whales, according to the Georgia Strait Alliance.

Deer are excellent swimmers and are known to be frequent visitors to the San Juan Islands. However, the deer population has decreased in recent years according to the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, thought to be related to a deadly adenovirus hemorrhagic disease that is believed to have reached the San Juans in 2021. However, the Department of Fish and Wildlife estimated the population could rebound relatively quickly.

Related Articles

• Taya White
• Jun 6, 2023
• https://www.kmzu.com/news/swan-lake-national-wildlife-refuge-suspends-waterfowl-hunting-program/article_b4598f3a-0484-11ee-ad3c-9b1682527662.html

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Print
• Copy article link
• Save

SUMNER — Due to a staffing shortage and workload demands, Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Sumner is suspending its waterfowl hunting program.

Refuge manager Steve Whitson says the decrease in staff and upcoming improvement projects that require redesigning about 80% of the refuge’s infrastructure has made waterfowl hunting an incompatible use.

Managed deer, conservation order light goose, squirrel, and dove hunting programs will continue as they have in the past.  

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Print
• Copy article link
• Save

Shutterstock/BirdFlu

• https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/05/avian-flu-h5n1-world-health-organization-mammals/

KAY SMYTHENEWS AND COMMENTARY WRITER

June 05, 202311:52 AM ET

FONT SIZE:

https://f403b5aaefe026e67a26bdc1f73529aa.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

Research published on May 29 revealed the “rapid evolution” of the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus.

Since 1996, avian flu (H5N1) has led to enormous economic losses and the mass depopulation of billions of poultry, the study authors noted in their research. In the less than 30 years since its first identification, H5N1 has spread rapidly throughout the world, and has evolved in a series of transient, phylogenetically distinct clades. So rapid is the spread that nations are now calling for the full vaccination of all poultry, according to MedicalXpress.

While the threat of H5N1 to humans is relatively low at present, the impact on birds and mammals is a cause for concern. According to the researchers “something happened” in 2021 that led the family of bird flu viruses to become significantly more infectious, and caused outbreaks to last all year, instead of just popping up sporadically.

Richard Webby, the World Health Organization’s head of the center studying influenza in animals, said the most recent outbreak is “absolutely” the largest the world has ever seen.

https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1665434038088220677&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2023%2F06%2F05%2Favian-flu-h5n1-world-health-organization-mammals%2F&sessionId=c1f80ad9fc122144a14e735cc269f4fb4e2ef623&siteScreenName=dailycaller&theme=light&widgetsVersion=aaf4084522e3a%3A1674595607486&width=550px

“That does increase the potential that even just by chance [the virus could] pick up genetic traits that allow it to be more of a human virus,” Webby noted, according to MedicalXpress. Webby also led the research published in the journal “Nature.”

In Chile, some 9,000 sea lions, penguins, otters, porpoises and dolphins have died of bird flu since the start of 2023, the outlet noted, though this figure has been called into question.

Webby said that one of the things that “scares us the most” is indications that the virus is now spreading within mammal populations. It would only take “two or three minor changes in one protein of the viruses” for it to become highly adapted to human hosts, Webby added. (RELATED: ‘It’s Just A Matter Of Time’: Scientists Issue Warning As Deadly, Ebola-Like Virus Spreads)

Another type of bird flu, H3N8, killed its first ever human in April 2023. The patient is believed to have contracted the virus due to close proximity and exposure to live poultry and wet markets in China.