Should you be a locavore? - Part II: economics, ecology and health

Last week I discussed the history of the local-food movement and the fact that it is not a single movement but the outgrowth of several grassroots initiatives to address economic, cultural, ecological and political concerns.

Many of those concerns got a seminal voicing in the work of E.F. Schumacher, economist and author of “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.”

Schumacher saw resource-intensive “big business” as dehumanizing and unsustainable. He proposed smaller, more human-scale solutions to economic and social concerns.

“Bigger is better” business practices, in agriculture and elsewhere, unquestionably have downsides – not the least of which is a tendency to equate the concepts of right and wrong with those of profit and loss.

Popular media reflect our uneasiness with “bottom-line” corporate culture in films and TV shows filled with evil corporations and titanium-hearted executives – making a buck at the expense of our humanity.

While Satan may not really head a New York law firm, the local-food movement is, in part, a reaction to commercial agriculture practices – dead livestock and chicken manure rendered into cattle feed, inhumane animal living conditions and slaughter practices, human rights violations among migrant workers and other issues affecting our physical, spiritual and cultural health.

When advocates say “buy locally,” they don’t really mean bop down to your neighborhood corporate farm for some pesticide-laden produce. They mean buy from local producers who are doing it differently.

Farmers and ranchers are often no more enamored of commercial methods than their customers, but the trend for decades has been to join the conglomerates or end up on the auction block.

Developing local markets creates a synergistic loop that benefits producers and consumers, giving both more control of how food is produced, keeping money in the local economy and allowing small, boutique and family farms to stay in business.

Local producers are accountable to their customers, not a corporate entity. And they are right there, where you can evaluate their methods and vote with your dollar to encourage the practices you support. Both the food and the local economy are healthier.

Ecologically, the most common reasons I hear for eating locally relate to the energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (CO2) associated with “food miles,” the distance food travels from its source to your table. The average meal has traveled 1,500 miles to reach your plate, so it seems a legitimate concern.

However, a new study from Carnegie Mellon University shows that food miles are only a minor portion of the energy use and greenhouse gas expenditure over the lifecycle of our food. The types of food and methods of production are a much larger portion of the problem.

The primary offenders are beef and dairy, due to the methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), byproducts of cows and their manure. Cows are ruminants, with multiple stomachs that produce methane as a byproduct of digestion. Not to be indelicate, but it comes out both ends of a cow all day long.

Nitrous oxide is emitted by manure as well as by soil bacteria that digest the commercial fertilizers used on cattle feed. These gases have up to 200 times the “greenhouse” potency of CO2.

When the entire lifecycle of food from planting to table is evaluated, only 11 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions are related to transportation. You can save as much greenhouse gas by skipping beef and dairy one day a week as by sourcing 100 percent of your food locally.

So does that mean you eating locally is unimportant? Of course not. But it gives you options – and, incidentally, it relates back to one of our original conundrums: do you buy or avoid that organic produce from Chile or Mexico?

If avoiding pesticides, antibiotics and hormones is a high priority for you, one option would be to use local, seasonal organics as much as possible and offset the use of more well-traveled organics by eating less beef, dairy and other greenhouse gas-intensive fare. (See “Resources” for a great cookbook with inspirational recipes using seasonal foods.)

Every decision we make to live more sustainably has tradeoffs – but we have the incredible luxury of those tradeoffs and of concerning ourselves with where our food comes from geographically, not where our next meal is coming from.

Making sustainability decisions is part of changing the mindset of the most energy-intensive, least green country in the world. Succeeding in that will go a long way toward solving the planet’s ecological crisis.

Next up: “Local food: politics, food shortages, globalization and fair trade.”

To comment on this article online, visit http://www.thevillagenews.com.