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> Buy local produce, and let your local supermarket or grocer know this. Educate others. It saves on all of the transport emissions from air or truck freight of

> Buy local produce, and let your local supermarket or grocer know this. Educate others. It saves on all of the transport emissions from air or truck freight of goods. This doesn't make much sense intuitively, and a quick Google search seems to confirm that most of the environment impact of produce comes from the growing efficiency and production methods, not from its transportation. Feel-good measures that do very little are bad enough, since they encourage complacency, but feel-good measures that actually make the environment worse are terrible! In terms of one's diet, I think the best one can do is to stop eating beef. It is terrible compared to other meats. In terms of one's overall impact, getting involved politically is probably the easiest way to make a change. Switching from Mexican tomatoes to greenhouse-grown Canadian tomatoes is not going to make much of a difference in either direction.

eggy 10y ago
I should have been more clear on what I meant by 'local produce': Local, or US Feta cheese, not imported from Greece. California pistachios, not Turkish. USA/NJ tomatoes, not from Holland or elsewhere. Farmer's markets. Every little bit helps, and it is not like you are taking any austerity measure between Greek or US Feta for example. People rely too much on government to legislate intelligence. Emergent properties arise out of local, individual changes in behavior or choices. Yes, government matters, but it does start with individuals. As far as growing efficiency and production, the US both imports and exports more food than any other country. We are very efficient at growing subsidized crops like corn. Why don't we stop the subsidies and grow more variety with the same efficiency? Less exporting, which is primarily due to an abundance in the US due to subsidies, would certainly trim the carbon footprint. The US exports $149 Trillion worth of food! Agreed on beef, and all the sugar in the American diet in the form of corn syrup and others.
- greeneggs 10y ago
  I don't know. Shipping is incredibly efficient these days. If only 10% of the CO2 footprint of your food comes from shipping (which is roughly right according to quick Google searches), optimizing shipping distance is really the wrong thing. Instead, you should choose the most efficient producers, wherever in the world they are located---that is, optimize the 90% term. How? Buy the cheapest food! If Turkish pistachios are cheaper than California ones, then they are probably being grown more efficiently, with lower CO2 emissions. Price presumably reflects producer costs. We certainly don't export $149 trillion of food annually. US GDP is only $16.8 trillion. I see $133 billion of agricultural exports in 2015, according to [1]. But again, I don't think this matters, and don't think that reducing food exports and imports would reduce total CO2 emissions. [1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/foreign-agricultural-trade-of-the-united-states-fatus/calendar-year/ http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/foreign-agricultural-t...

eggy 10y ago

I should have been more clear on what I meant by 'local produce': Local, or US Feta cheese, not imported from Greece. California pistachios, not Turkish. USA/NJ tomatoes, not from Holland or elsewhere. Farmer's markets. Every little bit helps, and it is not like you are taking any austerity measure between Greek or US Feta for example. People rely too much on government to legislate intelligence. Emergent properties arise out of local, individual changes in behavior or choices. Yes, government matters, but it does start with individuals. As far as growing efficiency and production, the US both imports and exports more food than any other country. We are very efficient at growing subsidized crops like corn. Why don't we stop the subsidies and grow more variety with the same efficiency? Less exporting, which is primarily due to an abundance in the US due to subsidies, would certainly trim the carbon footprint. The US exports $149 Trillion worth of food! Agreed on beef, and all the sugar in the American diet in the form of corn syrup and others.

greeneggs 10y ago
I don't know. Shipping is incredibly efficient these days. If only 10% of the CO2 footprint of your food comes from shipping (which is roughly right according to quick Google searches), optimizing shipping distance is really the wrong thing. Instead, you should choose the most efficient producers, wherever in the world they are located---that is, optimize the 90% term. How? Buy the cheapest food! If Turkish pistachios are cheaper than California ones, then they are probably being grown more efficiently, with lower CO2 emissions. Price presumably reflects producer costs. We certainly don't export $149 trillion of food annually. US GDP is only $16.8 trillion. I see $133 billion of agricultural exports in 2015, according to [1]. But again, I don't think this matters, and don't think that reducing food exports and imports would reduce total CO2 emissions. [1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/foreign-agricultural-trade-of-the-united-states-fatus/calendar-year/ http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/foreign-agricultural-t...