Last week was Eat Local First week here in the District. Local farms, restaurants and businesses hosted events ranging from food festivals to film screenings to city garden tours — and, of course, happy hours, complete with all the organic tea cocktails your heart could desire — in celebration of Washington’s produce potential.
The week was filled with opportunities that no “locavore” in the district would dare miss. However, for those D.C. residents who truly care about making the district a greener place, beware. The festival’s emphasis on eating locally may do more harm to the environment than good.
What do you think produces more greenhouse gases: shipping produce on an airplane from Brazil to your local supermarket, or your weekly drive to this same supermarket to buy your groceries? The answer may surprise you. Consumer shopping trips generate 40 times as many food miles (a measurement of the energy used to transport food from producer to consumer) as does air freight, according to a British study. What you buy once you get to your local store matters far, far less than the means you use to get there. So if your genuine interest lies in reducing your carbon footprint, bike, don’t drive, to your local Trader Joe’s.
Moreover, the vast majority of the greenhouse gases emitted during food production happen before those fruits and vegetables even leave the farm. Production factors, including carbon emissions from soil, crop yields, water and fertilizer use, and storage, account for more than 80 percent of the average household’s food-related carbon footprint. If the tomatoes you buy are grown out of season in a low-yield greenhouse heated with fossil fuels, it doesn’t matter whether they come from Virginia or the Virgin Islands. The process used to grow them is so inefficient as to render their origin insignificant.
That’s not to say that locally grown produce is bad for the environment. The point, rather, is that Eat Local First week and similar events divert needed attention away from the agricultural processes and buyer habits that generate far more of our nation’s carbon emissions than the shipping of food over great distances from producer to consumer. For example, the manufacture of red meat produces 150 percent more greenhouse gases than raising chicken or fish. If a household wants to make an immediate reduction in its carbon footprint, then a switch from steak to salmon would be far more effective than a switch from Texas to Maryland beef.
The attitude that “locally grown” and “green” are inherently synonymous is a mistaken one. They can be, but there are instances where they are not. Compare, for a moment, an apple grown in Michigan to one grown in Argentina. In September, it makes perfect sense to buy the Michigan apple. But if you buy it in February, it requires artificial warmth and sunlight in order to grow, not to mention costly and wasteful storage in order to keep it fresh. When it comes to fruit, buying in season is more important, from a green perspective, than buying locally.
The terms “green,” “local” and “sustainable” are grouped together so frequently as to appear synonymous. But it is vitally important to distinguish between them if D.C. is to make real progress toward a sustainable future. If you have an interest in the green revolution, pay attention to more than just the miles your food has traveled to reach your plate. Skip the beef, greenhouse produce and out-of-season goods. Look for crops that are native to the area in which they’re being grown. And, for goodness’ sake, go easy on the tea cocktails.
Evelyn Smith is a student at Georgetown University.
