Local Food and Fuel Efficiency

Anthony Flaccavento, who farms in the foothills of the Virginia Appalachians and sells his harvest at a farmers market in nearby Abingdon, is fed up with the naysayers who are popping up all over the place these days asserting that locally grown food isn’t so fuel-efficient after all. As noted here at Truly Local, the New York Times reported in December on a study showing that so many factors come into play in assessing any particular food item’s carbon footprint that it’s impossible to make generalizations. Newsweek recently added another dig:

It's the golden rule of the local-food movement: the fewer miles that food travels, the better for the environment. The only problem is, it may not be true.

Flaccavento weighed in with his answer to the skeptics in a commentary published in the Washington Post. Those who have “disparaged local food economies” are just plain wrong, he asserts, laying out some simple math to prove his point.

“A full tractor-trailer hauls about 32,000 pounds of produce. On average, according to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, this food travels about 1,750 miles from farm to market, in trucks that get about 5.5 miles per gallon. That's 320 gallons of fuel to transport 32,000 pounds, or about a gallon of fuel for every 100 pounds of food.

“My farm is an eight-mile round trip from the Abingdon farmers market. Our '94 Toyota pickup gets 15 miles to the gallon, fully loaded, so my trip to and from the market uses just over a half gallon of gas. We take and sell an average of 1,600 pounds of fresh produce every Saturday morning. This works out to 3,200 pounds of food for every gallon of fuel expended. That's 32 times more efficient.”

Of course, some farmers drive farther to markets and sell less, and some consumers drive farther to farmers markets and buy less than they would at a supermarket. Flaccavento acknowledged those variables and conceded that when they get tossed into the mix, the math is no longer so simple. He is not a hardcore locavore. But he remains firm in his conviction about the environmental superiority of locally-based food economies.

“When my wife and I get up at 5 on Saturday morning to start packing our truck, a cup of strong coffee and a glass of orange juice make it a little easier. So we're not dogmatic about local foods. But we also know, first hand, that locally produced foods are increasingly abundant, convenient and rewarding. The critics notwithstanding, buying local food is a sensible way to eat well, save fuel and reduce your carbon footprint.”

Comments

[truck rental]

I totally agree with you, I always try to buy local food because I know that this merchandise is the most fresh and tasty, and the fact that it traveled short distance makes it green products.