Locavism
Locavism: a movement in which people eat locally in order to reduce carbon emissions created by food transportation. North Bay’s Near North Locavores have adopted this growing environmental trend as a way of life. A few of North Bay’s ‘eat local’ proponents were kind enough to answer my questions about their green lifestyle. I found their willingness to change and their consideration for their impact on our world inspiring. Despite its requirement to drastically reduce your diet’s diversity in the name of carbon reduction, Locavism has many appealing aspects. Develop a sense of community. Become reconnected with food. Be more conscious about its obtainment, and therefore more appreciative of what’s on your plate. Support your local farmers. I was converted. No more shopping at No Frills. I can sacrifice my rainbow peppers from Mexico and my blueberries in January. Hell, I’m already vegan I’m not afraid of a little self-discipline in order to make the more responsible choice. But wait- does eating local really take a bite out of carbon emissions? The less distance food travels, the less impact on the environment. Seems like a sensible notion, right? Being the eternal skeptic that I am, I delved into researching the issue. I discovered that our food system is much more complicated than that.
First of all, a little perspective: food transportation only accounts for 2-4 percent of the overall impact of the food industry on the environment. Also, food kilometers and environmental burden are not directly correlated. How a food is cultivated, stored- and what it is– is most important when determining the environmental impact. In fact, in many cases Ontario grown food could have a significantly greater foot-print than food shipped to us from half-way around the world. Concentrating food production in the most favorable regions is the best way to minimize environmental impact. By growing food in its most ideal conditions, it allows for much more efficient use of fuel, capital, machinery and other resources. Ontario’s heavy reliance on greenhouses and cold storage use much more energy than production in more favorable climates. Studies show that the largest greenhouse gas impact of food transportation is not due to shipping food from producers to stores, but can be attributed to individual families making many small-volume shopping trips by car to transport food from stores to their homes,. Moving produce in super-efficient diesel-powered container ships or even airplanes or tractor trailers requires much less energy per apple, flower or chicken breast, even if the distance covered is much greater.
With the population of the planet rapidly heading for an estimated 9 billion people, and already massive food shortages, producing enough food while reducing our agriculture’s impact on the planet, is no doubt a serious issue. There are some merited benefits to eating local, but they do not provide effective solutions to improving the sustainability of humankind’s food production. Eating local is a great way to provide support to farmers in your community, however if western nations suddenly stopped buying food from developing nations, it would have catastrophic consequences for the most impoverished in our world. Also, poverty is the single biggest factor driving problems like deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil depletion and the endangerment of wildlife.
Attention should be shifted to the main source of environmental destruction from our food system. Meat and dairy production create more greenhouse gases than all of the transportation in the world combined. The livestock sector occupies 30 percent of our earth’s land. Producing a pound of beef for consumption requires more than 10 pounds of plant protein for animal feed, along with massive amounts of water and land. 14.8 pounds of CO2 is created by every pound of beef, more than 36 times the CO2 emitted by producing the average vegetable. Methane created by animal waste is also a serious problem. The data is overwhelmingly clear; adopting a plant-based diet is a much more effective way to reduce carbon through food choices. In fact, I’m left wondering if you can even call yourself an environmentalist if you consume meat.
Is Locavism just a case of idealistic hippies romanticizing the idea of self sufficient communities ‘living off the land’, denouncing the modern food system based on assumptions and emotions, instead of facts and data? The movement’s main claim of lowering carbon output by lowering food kilometers has little to no validity. When keeping in mind that food transport as a whole accounts for only an extremely small portion of the food industry’s environmental impact, it is clear the movement’s focus is severely misplaced. What’s the harm in promoting this as a “green lifestyle”? Well, it’s simply not conducive to progress. I praise those who are willing to make drastic lifestyles changes to do their part for the environment. However, the meat and dairy industry’s effects are wide-ranging and radically more severe, and should therefore rank as the leading focus of environmentalist.
By Cyndi Mayhew
