All I want for Christmas is…

A compost bin!!

No jewelry. No cashmere.

Just somewhere to recycle ALL that vegetable refuse that I produce over the year instead of putting it in (gulp!) my garbage can on its way to the landfill! My husband (bless him!) delivered my lovely black, rotating bin early. Along with a book called “Let It Rot! A Gardener’s Guide to Composting” by Stu Campbell for some holiday reading by the fire! I generate a LOT of green waste and each time I place that in my kitchen garbage can, I cringe. Living in a suburban neighborhood, with manicured lawns on each side, left us with no place to build a bin intended for rotting refuse.

My husband came through with an Enviro-Cycle Composter bin that rotates easily on a roller base. From the operational guide, you can compost year-round, and in the winter, apparently, freezing breaks down fibers readily so you’re ready for some fine decomposition in the spring. As a lovely accessory, I also get a stainless steel pail to store my veggie waste until I have enough to make the trip outside worthwhile! I have a lot to learn – but after glancing at the guide, I realize I need 50% ‘brown’ refuse to mix with my green. Brown material includes leaves, grass clippings, straw, shredded paper … I’m thinking that sounds like a job for one of my kids. I’m sure I can hold up my end of the bargain producing the green!

After 10 years as a CSA sharer, I don’t know how I’ve existed this long without one! I hope you get exactly what you wish for this Holiday as well! I’m going to go peel some carrots for lunch so I can get started…..

Forget the food miles argument

Can we just lay the whole food miles argument to rest? Food miles is not a primary reason to eat locally.

A new study, Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States, published this past Wednesday by the journal Environmental Science & Technology reports that the type of food you eat and the manner in which it is produced are more important components of its contribution to your carbon footprint than the distance that food travelled to get to you:

The [greenhouse gas] emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household’s footprint for food consumption.

Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.” Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.

Buy local because it's fresher and tastes better. Buy local to support farmers in your area. Buy local because you want to know how your food was produced. But to lower your food's impact on the environment, shift to sustainably-produced foods and to a diet focussed more heavily on plants than animal products.

Another look at food miles

I'll never argue 'food miles' as one of my main reasons for eating locally. My main concerns are taste, freshness, sustainability, healthy eating, and supporting local farmers. However, here from the Washington Post is a calculation of fuel per conventional vs. farmers market food miles for all those naysayers who seem to think decreasing one's food miles is the only reason anyone would go to the trouble of eating locally. This won't shut them up, but at least it provides an alternative point of view. The writer is a farmer and a fellow and director of Appalachian Sustainable Development.

Of late, a number of commentators have disparaged local food economies, based on two claims: First, that shipping food long distances in fully loaded tractor-trailers is more efficient than local transactions; and, second, that consumers travel much further to buy local foods, creating more, not less carbon emissions. They're wrong.

I don't know whose calculations are correct. I hope local eating also helps lower my environmental impact, at least a little. But even if it had zero net positive effect on my carbon footprint, I'd still eat local.

Food miles is not the issue

Or at least not the only issue, or the most crucial issue. It's one small part of the greater picture of eating locally and an even smaller part of the question of global climate change. As Michael Specter points out in this month's New Yorker, in an article on carbon footprinting entitled Big Foot:

"Food carries enormous symbolic power, so the concept of “food miles”—the distance a product travels from the farm to your home—is often used as a kind of shorthand to talk about climate change in general."

But that symbolic power doesn't automatically translate into importance in the big picture.

“People should stop talking about food miles,” Adrian Williams told [Specter]. “It’s a foolish concept: provincial, damaging, and simplistic.” Williams is an agricultural researcher in the Natural Resources Department of Cranfield University, in England. He has been commissioned by the British government to analyze the relative environmental impacts of a number of foods. “The idea that a product travels a certain distance and is therefore worse than one you raised nearby—well, it’s just idiotic,” he said. “It doesn’t take into consideration the land use, the type of transportation, the weather, or even the season. Potatoes you buy in winter, of course, have a far higher environmental ticket than if you were to buy them in August.”

I agree. Food miles is not the issue. Other things being equal, it's better for food to travel less. But things are seldom truly equal. We can grow tomatoes here in Ohio in the dead of winter, but it takes energy to keep them warm and well-lit enough. So in February is a local hothouse tomato necessarily less impactful than one shipped in from California?

Of course, who wants to eat hothouse OR shippable tomatoes? I'll wait for August, thanks!