The greenest groceries are plants – regardless of whether they’re local or organic. Simon Hill explains.
If we want to lower the environmental footprint of our meals, what we eat is far more important than where our food has travelled from, or whether it was organically or conventionally produced.
Isn’t local best?
We’ve all heard this catch-cry, but if you’re like me, you may have wondered about the actual environmental impact of these choices.
When it comes to eating locally produced food, it’s important to understand that for most foods, transportation emissions only make up a small amount of the food’s total greenhouse gas emissions – typically less than 10 percent. The main drivers of emissions in our food system, accounting for 80 percent of most foods’ environmental footprint, are land use change (e.g. deforestation) and farming (emissions from animals, farming equipment, fertilisers, etc.).
Supporting local businesses often gives you the opportunity to find out what practices farms are using so you can buy from those who are dedicated to looking after their land and nourishing the soil. However, it’s important that we don’t let the feel-good aspect of this distract us from the fact that the percentage of animal products in our diet, particularly red meat and dairy, is single-handedly the most important contributor to our food-related emissions, regardless of whether they were farmed locally, conventionally, free-range or organically.
What about organic?
Similarly, the ‘organic versus conventional farming’ debate detracts from what is most important – the percentage of animal based foods in our diet.
There is actually no clear winner when it comes to the environmental impact of organic versus conventional food. For example, based on data from 742 agriculture systems and over ninety foods, while certain food groups such as fruits produce fewer emissions when organically grown, others such as vegetables produce fewer emissions when conventionally grown.
Furthermore, while organic farming typically uses less energy because it does not require the same energy-intensive chemical inputs, it requires substantially more land to produce the same amount of food because the yield is lower, and it is responsible for greater pollution of our waterways due to nitrogen and phosphorus that leaches from manure, its primary fertiliser.
This extends to animal foods as well. Unfortunately, many of the claims about the environmentally friendly nature of organic animal products are not supported by science. Animals raised on organic farms take longer to grow to slaughter weight, produce less meat, and require more land. As a result, the greenhouse gas emissions from grass-fed organic beef, lamb, chicken, pork and eggs are typically greater than their conventional counterparts.
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The point here is not to write off organic or local food altogether but to remind us not to lose sight of the forest for the trees. When it comes to lowering the environmental footprint of our diet, the biggest difference we can make is through eating more whole plant foods and fewer animal foods. Not through buying organic or local.
This article is an edited extract from The Proof is in the Plants by Simon Hill. Published by Penguin Life. |