The concept of "food miles," or how far food has traveled before we buy it, has become the latest hot button for environmental food activists. And just when you thought the notion of food miles would be another compelling reason to buy local comes a study that suggests that computing real food miles leads to sometimes counterintuitive conclusions, namely that some locally sourced and grown food can leave a far heavier carbon footprint than foods shipped thousands of miles.
In a thoughtful piece on the New York Times op-ed page this morning, James McWilliams draws this remarkably level-headed conclusion:
We must also be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness.
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