Buying local doesn’t always mean buying greener

[The Straight Story]

Buying local doesn’t always mean buying greener

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) — One of the most frequently voiced mantras by environmentalists is “buy local.” But it may be bad advice.

Buying local ostensibly means less transportation of goods from afar, which equates to less carbon emissions and therefore less global warming. It also means supporting local businesses, in many cases farmers rather than giant agricultural corporations. And that has come to mean eating healthier, along with the benefits that brings. (It’s one of the tenets Michele Obama is holding out to the country in her campaign as First Lady to get healthier food in our diets.)

Whether fewer resources are consumed by buying local depends on the product. For example, if a local farmer drives 200 miles to deliver a case of tomatoes to a market, is that better than a supermarket shipping a truckload 1500 miles? Or whether these locally grown products are healthier, too, is a matter of debate: some local farmer may not abide by the same quality assurance guidelines that a big company does.

I am guilty of rendering the buy-local advice. It’s an easy action that people can take to feel as if they are being green, and gets them at least start thinking more deeply about their consumption habits.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/buying-local-doesnt-always-mean-buying-greener-2011-08-05

[SpiralHawk]

1. Corporate agitprop (R)

RepubliCorp is out to crap all over any kind of sustainable economic endeavor...

[WinkyDink]

2. "Buying local ostensibly means less transportation of goods from afar." THERE IS NO "OSTENSIBLY."

[dmallind]

4. And nobody answered the Q

Every greenie will tell you public transit is greener than cars. They are right. But my car gets about four times the mpg of a bus so how can that be? Because the bus carries more than 4 people of course. It's the per person fuel that matters.

So a farmer driving 200lbs of tomatoes to a farmer's market five miles away in a pick-up uses more fuel per tomato than a distribution company moving 40,000lbs of tomatoes 500 miles in a semi.

Exactly the same principle.

[Javaman]

6. however, a good organic farmer will not use fossil fuel based pesticides and fertilizers.

so your argument falls flat.

If it were only about shipping, that would be only one thing, but it's not. It's about the closed loop of organic farming.

On a factory farm, trackers, harvesters, planting, feeding and watering all require fossil fuels to operated.

A good organic farm uses none of these.

[XemaSab]

3. A local farmer's probably not going to drive 200 miles to deliver a case

At 20 miles per gallon, that's 20 gallons of gas round-trip. Gas is $3.80 here, and so that's $76 for the gas alone.

Tomatoes generally go for $2 a pound here. If there are 20 lbs of tomatoes in a case, then a case costs $40.

The farmer in this scenario would LOSE almost 40 dollars in the transaction.

[Newest Reality]

5. Local may very well be

the more dangerous antithesis of multinational, corporate Globalism. It represents a shift from corporatist control and profit-only business ethics towards what is becoming an obvious necessity: ethics that include the factor of benefit to humans and life as part of the equation.

While food production is one example of localization, it is not the only aspect of the emerging transition. Diminishing resource availability is simmering beneath the surface of current social, economic and political turmoils.

With a clear vision of the increasing importance of localization of work, manufacturing, food production and entertainment, we can begin to pull-back and extricate ourselves from the controlling interests that intend to dominate and own our ways and means. There are pockets of experimentation in progress and it can be assume that the corporatist, paradigm of cancerous exploitation will take note that success in such pragmatic and cooperative measures represents a viable threat to the dominant, oligarchical regime comprised of a small percentage of the population.

When people speak of revolt and revolutions, they might tend to jump to the conclusion that there are limited paths to change that center around drastic measures and violence. Yet, when your nemesis is a cabal of corporate veils behind which a wealthy and powerful elite expand and exercise multifaceted means of persuasion and control, (including violence and Police State tactics) and they are also in control of the goods and commodities that are essential to life, other ways to oppose and relieve ourselves of the poverty and decimation they induce start to stand out in contrast.

[kestrel91316]

7. Didn't you already post this LAST month??

[kestrel91316]

8. Corporate propaganda, IMHO.

[AndyTiedye]

9. Seems Like Poorly-Done Corporate Propaganda to Me

Starts out bashing local farmers in favor of mega-agriculture,
and then leaps into an odd claim that sending our industrial
jobs offshore is somehow "greener", even though the evidence
is quite the opposite.

The comments under the article suggest that many readers recognize it as such.

[Marrah_G]

11. I agree !!!!!!!!

[Marrah_G]

10. The answer is CSA

Community Supported Agriculture and fisheries

The more people involved the cheaper it gets for everyone.

Imagine what could be done if food stamp funds could be used for CSA shares.

I urge all my friends to find out where their food is coming from, buy from local farms, see what sort of co-ops and CSAs are near them.

We have lost a sense of community and connectedness in this country.