Seeohtoo Footprints – The Abominable Strawman

Oxygen is my friend and carbon dioxide is my enemy.  I need oxygen in me and to purge my body of CO2.  Good gas, bad gas, easy. Don’t give me any detail, just tell me what I need to know.  CO2 is bad for the planet too.  It makes the earth hotter and this is bad. A closer look at methane, water vapour, nitrous oxide and ozone has revealed them to be sporting the same prison garb and swag bag as CO2, in fact methane is more than 20 times more effective as a greenhouse gas – the gang leader. They all have the potential to contribute to the warming of the globe.

Everything I consume leaves a trail as it walks the path to righteousness and this is called the carbon footprint. Much of this footprint is created by burning fossil fuels to move our food from the farm to the plate. The argument goes; that the farther my plate is from the farm, the bigger the carbon footprint.  So buy local or move.

Personally, when I buy local it’s because I like to support the local economy. I don’t do it at the expense of quality and I don’t do it to save the planet. The free-range pork stocked by my butcher is very good value and makes perfect porchetta.  His local dry cure bacon has not been so special when I tried it a couple of times, so now I go further afield either personally or by sourcing less locally. These are my personal priorities.  I would love to think that I am contributing to the welfare of my environment as a secondary benefit but in many cases I’m not.  Sadly the global warming potential (GWP) of our food is not so simple to calculate. Much of my meat come from animals, I can’t find another source.  These animals produce a lot of gas.  Methane from one end and carbon dioxide from the other. “A single cow produces about 110 kilos of methane per year in manure and what the EPA delicately calls “enteric fermentation,” so over its likely lifetime, a beef cow produces 220 kilos of methane” (The Cheeseburger Footprint, Jamias Cascio). With all due respect a vegans life is not for me so on this basis alone, by eating meat I am already increasing my carbon footprint far more than my vegan neighbour who insists on couriering all his ratatouille direct from Nice by dragster.

A 2008 study by DEFRA concluded (amongst many other things) that UK grown tomatoes delivered to a distribution centre has significantly higher GWP than those delivered from spanish producers.  This is largely down to the heating systems used to maintain greenhouse temperatures for growing conditions as well as humidity control to reduce the need for fungicides.  The additional energy required for transportation from Spain only has a moderate impact on the overall GWP (if you’re reading this in Denmark, consider an even greater gap due the amount of energy produced using coal-fired power stations as opposed to nuclear). But this is only the beginning of the story.  Consider the higher levels of pollution (eutrophication and acidification) in the water-courses of Spain resulting from the additional pesticides required to control greater risks of viruses carried by insects.  This small example uses fruit requiring very little processing so doesn’t consider the impact of manufacturing or indeed storage. Choose your poison.

Essentially it can be misleading to use the carbon footprint generically to argue for or against buying and consuming locally produced food. Ask not where your bottled mineral water comes from.  Ask from where your mineral water’s bottle comes.