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Local farms generally consume more carbon to get your goods to you. That's because the ratio of envelope : contents for each subsequent chain in transportation

Local farms generally consume more carbon to get your goods to you. That's because the ratio of envelope : contents for each subsequent chain in transportation goes up exponentially. eg: It takes ~0.1kg of cargo ship to transport 1kg of food, ~1kg of container truck, ~5kgs of a pickup truck from a local farm and ~100-1000kgs of your personal car, depending on how much you buy per trip. So buying food from a local farm delivered to you via pickup truck or having a farmer's market that's just a little bit further away from you than a grocery store or buying just a little bit less at the farmers market than you would at a grocery store can negate the entire difference of having foods shipped to you from all across the world.

bmn__ 6y ago
That doesn't make sense. A cargo ship does not pick up food from a farm or slaughterhouse and does not deliver food products into my fridge. So, it's a truck and a freight train and a ship and a truck for foreign produced food, and only a truck for locally produced food.
- ars 6y ago
  A truck for locally produced food is not usually full nor efficiently packed. Rather the farmer will grab a little of this, and a little of that. Whatever he can sell the day. This uses far more energy. And don't forget the energy needed to harvest the food - large growers do it in bulk, small farmers will need to fire up the tractor for short runs. A cargo ship uses FAR FAR FAR less energy than you might imagine. Even shipping something by rail across the US uses less energy than driving to the next city.