Going Local is Key to Healthy Food System [General]

2012 Jul 15
www.thestar.com

Mike Schreiner

I love the taste of farm fresh local food. There’s nothing like Ontario asparagus to usher in spring, succulent strawberries to begin summer, and juicy sweet corn to close out the dog days of summer. Critics call it romanticizing food; I call it delicious.

I have no dilemma using my money to support Ontario’s economy by buying local food. And scientific research confirms that fresh picked produce contains more nutrients. Local food packs a lot of value into each bite.

I must confess, however, that I drink too much coffee, enjoy sliced avocados on my local greens, and can’t do without chocolate for dessert. Eating local isn’t about purity. It simply makes sense for our economy, our environment and my health to make more, not all, of my food purchases local.

It’s no coincidence that as the amount of global food exports has grown, farm incomes have declined. You don’t need a PhD in economics to understand that farmers become price takers, with reduced profit margins, when local supply chains disappear and a few global corporations dominant the market. Many farmers now have to earn off-farm income to support their farming habit.

The local food movement has started to reverse this trend. In Ontario, the food and farming sector has now passed the auto sector as the number one employer. In the Greater Golden Horseshoe alone, food and farming’s economic value is $12.3 billion. This direct economic activity is estimated to contribute $35 billion annually to our economy through the multiplier effect of keeping our dollars local. For example, purchasing locally grown and processed wine contributes $8.48 per litre to Ontario’s economy versus $0.67 per litre for imported wine.

Profitable Ontario farms are essential to maintaining food security. Studies estimate that Ontario cities have only three days of food supplies if the border closes. While I can live without my coffee, avocados or chocolate, I can’t live without any food at all. In times of crisis, a nation that can’t feed itself is less secure than a nation that can’t defend itself.

Locavore critics rightly point out that local food can be more expensive. But I am happy to have the choice of buying food farmed in ways that meet Ontario’s strong standards for health, safety, and the environment. And I want farm workers to get a fair income.

Local food critics also question its environmental claims, especially greenhouse gas reductions. It is true that transportation represents a relatively small percentage of food’s environmental footprint. Adopting sustainable growing practices from no-till farming to using less chemicals does more to improve farming’s environmental impact. Still, GHG emissions from air transport of food is more than four times higher than by truck and 50 times more than by rail, and a growing amount of food is being shipped by air.

The big change, however, comes from consumers. Eating processed foods, especially frozen dinners, and meat, especially beef, is responsible for most of the food system’s environmental footprint. A good eco-reason to buy local is that you are more likely to eat fresh and minimally processed foods and meat products that are not from factory farms.

The road to a healthier food system leads directly to farmers using innovative and sustainable production practices to supply us with fresh, safe and healthy local food.

Mike Schreiner grew up on a farm, started his first local food business at age 26 and was co-founder of Local Food Plus. He is currently leader of the Green Party of Ontario. leader@gpo.ca

2012 Jul 15
Thanks for that Zymurgist, and I don't disagree with what you point out here, but I am probably not the only one who is confused about whether to buy local, or organic, and when to do either. And recently I have been reading about "life cycle analysis" of food, and that buying local may not always mean that your food has a smaller carbon footprint. I recently read an article (sorry can't remember where) that used the crop of commercial flowers in Holland as an example. For the Dutch to buy local flowers, the carbon footprint was much larger than buying flowers grown in and shipped from Africa, where there is also the social benefit of supporting a developing economy.

A friend linked me to this article today, excerpted below www.worldwatch.org/node/6064

"food miles/kilometers don't tell the whole story. "Food miles are a good measure of how far food has traveled. But they're not a very good measure of the food's environmental impact."

That impact depends on how the food was transported, not just how far. For example, trains are 10 times more efficient at moving freight, ton for ton, than trucks are. So you could eat potatoes trucked in from 100 miles away, or potatoes shipped by rail from 1,000 miles away, and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their transport from farm to table would be roughly the same.

The environmental impact of food also depends on how it is grown. Swedish researcher Annika Carlsson-Kanyama led a study that found it was better, from a greenhouse-gas perspective, for Swedes to buy Spanish tomatoes than Swedish tomatoes, because the Spanish tomatoes were grown in open fields while the local ones were grown in fossil-fuel-heated greenhouses.

That seems obvious, but there are subtler issues at play as well. For example, Spain has plenty of the warmth and sunshine that tomatoes crave, but its main horticultural region is relatively arid and is likely to become more drought-prone in the future as a result of global climate change. What if water shortages require Spanish growers to install energy-intensive irrigation systems? And what if greenhouses in northern Europe were heated with renewable energy?

Perhaps it's inevitable that we consumers gravitate to a focus on food miles-the concept represents the last step before food arrives on our tables, the part of the agricultural supply chain that's most visible to us. And indeed, all other things being equal, it's better to purchase something grown locally than the same thing grown far away. "It is true that if you're comparing exact systems, the same food grown in the same way, then obviously, yes, the food transported less will have a smaller carbon footprint," Pirog says.

But a broader, more comprehensive picture of all the tradeoffs in the food system requires tracking greenhouse gas emissions through all phases of a food's production, transport, and consumption. And life-cycle analysis (LCA), a research method that provides precisely this "cradle-to-grave" perspective, reveals that food miles represent a relatively small slice of the greenhouse-gas pie."

So all this to say that I am more confused than ever, and have no idea how to begin assessing all the factors that go into raising food various ways in various places. I miss living in Essex county, where I could stop in at any one of dozens of roadside stands every day and choose from produce grown in the next field and harvested that morning. But I also wonder why I can go to a farmer's market in Potsdam and buy peaches from pennsylvania that are ripe and perfect, when anything I can buy in Ottawa, regardless of where they come from, are hard as rocks and taste like cardboard.

I guess the good thing is that we do have choices, I am just not always 100% sure I am making the right ones.

2012 Jul 16
Blubarry says " ...when anything I can buy in Ottawa, regardless of where they come from, are hard as rocks and taste like cardboard.".

Oh how I miss the tree ripened fruit I could easily get in the past. From the peaches grown in Annapolis Valley ( I was in Cape Breton at the time) to the local grown pears that were ripe/almost ripe when bought and had REAL FLAVOUR.

Some will pay a premium for Organic Food , I'll pay a premium for ripe (or near ripe) and TASTY fruit. Or tasty vegetables that have not had there flavour dumbed down or bread out.

Are there any supplies in Ottawa that can bring me back to the past experiences I had with ripeness (texture) and taste ?