Beef production emits so much methane that transport only accounts for 0.5 percent of its carbon footprint; for most food products, it’s under 10 percent, according to Hannah Ritchie of Our World in Data.
It’s not just about meat, though. Emissions from one animal product to another can vary greatly. If you swap out beef and dairy — the highest-emitting products, due to cows’ methane-rich burps and deforestation for grazing and animal feed production — with lower-emitting chicken, eggs, and fish, you can achieve almost the same reduction in emissions as if you went vegetarian or vegan.
But there’s a huge trade-off if you do that: animal welfare. Because chickens and fish are much smaller than cows and pigs, far more animals need to be killed to produce the same amount of food. Plus, these smaller animals tend to live in much worse factory farming conditions than cattle and dairy cows (though cows don’t have it easy either).
What we know about local food systems
Despite the scientific consensus that food miles are largely inconsequential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the locavore movement shouldn’t be written off.
Enthoven found that there are some ancillary benefits to be reaped from buying food grown close to home.
The first is that access to farmers markets and community-supported agriculture (CSA) — in which local produce is regularly delivered to consumers’ doorsteps — is correlated with increases in vegetable consumption, fewer meals eaten at restaurants, less consumption of processed food, and lower rates of obesity and diabetes.
A caveat: Some of the findings are self-reported, and CSA membership is correlated with higher income and education, as many CSA programs are priced out of reach to lower-income consumers. Many CSAs address this disparity by allowing consumers to pay in installments and/or with food stamp benefits.
Some research also suggests that local food systems can benefit a region’s agricultural economy. A 2016 study in Canada found that farms participating in short food supply chains, with few intermediaries between the farmer and the consumer, generate .75 full-time jobs per farmed hectare versus .19 for farms that sell through conventional channels.
As to whether purchasing local food boosts small farmers’ income, findings are mixed, with results dependent on the farmers’ gender, age, education, and experience, and whether researchers are looking at short- or long-term economic performance.
When farmers sell directly to consumers, they might earn more money than selling wholesale, but this approach requires much more time and labor, which could cancel out some of the increased income and in some cases even result in lower profits.
And for all its benefits, localized food systems will always be constrained for “economic, logistic, topographical and even arithmetic reasons,” according to Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel, herself a small farmer.
In a 2017 article, she explained that fresh local food is highly seasonal, especially in colder Northeastern climates, while much of the contemporary American diet relies on food grown and stored in the Midwest and consumed months or even years later elsewhere.
Beyond localism
The conversation among advocacy groups and academics around how we can build a more sustainable and ethical food system has expanded beyond the “slow food” and locavore movements of the early 2000s. There is now more discussion around the climate impact of America’s meat-heavy diets, even as US policy and spending priorities remain unresponsive to expert consensus on how to reduce food system emissions.
The rise of the locavore movement didn’t — and won’t — shrink America’s dietary carbon footprint. That said, we can give it credit for generating a level of excitement around improving the food economy that adjacent movements, like those for public health or animal rights, have largely failed to achieve.
But its shortcomings underscore a hard truth: Solutions that seem intuitively transformative for the climate may not actually be so. To tackle that biggest of problems, we’re gonna need to rethink our personal and political relationship to meat.
—Kenny Torrella
P.S. Does Earth Day have you thinking about sustainability and your personal impact? Sign up for Meat/Less, a five-part newsletter course from Vox staff writer Kenny Torrella. Over five emails, Kenny shares practical tips to help you eat less meat and more plant-based foods, including what to cook and where to shop, an inside look at the impact of our food choices, and evidence-based strategies on how to make your new habits stick. Sign up here with one click or read more here.
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