New blog Celsias makes a point about food grown locally being more beneficial to the environment as it reduces ‘food miles’. A catchy phrase, but one that avoids much of inputs into the energy or carbon balance of providing food, as he alludes to.
To be fair to farmers in NZ, for example, the total energy inputs required to grow and deliver food should be compared, and the environmentally conscious consumer will seek to minimize that number. Inputs into the energy balance, aside from transportation cost of the finished product, include delivery of water, manufacture and delivery of herbicides (natural or otherwise), seeds, equipment used on the farm (ploughs, seeders, watering, weeding, picking, fertilizing), transport of labour and the list goes on. Good natural conditions gives kiwi farmers an advantage here.
As the article points out we should also be cognisant of how many people are earning a reasonable living from the farm, particularly when there are no alternatives.
Not mentioned in the article (at least positively) is that we should seek to maximise sustainable productivity from each unit area, so that we can keep farmed land to a minimum and maximise land used for nature.
This is another version of the nappies debate – where there turns out to be similar environmental impact between disposable and reusable nappies – provided you count all of the costs.
My guess is that well run environmentally concious farms will almost always out-perform small farms close to the markets, and they will do so using far less land. Simple economics tells the same story – big farms are more efficient and can produce and deliver food for a lower cost than local farms.
All that said, the quality of locally grown fresh food is hard to beat, and much of the large scale industrial farms, especially in the USA, are producing food of dubious quality.
Lance Wiggs 
here in Oz, the stuff gets shipped from everywhere. And it tastes soggy and awful. Sydney is in an especial bind. As land releases have opened up out west, previous vege patches have become homes. Where does the food come from? Shipped from Newcastle. It’s madness. And contributing to this endless carbon economy.
Ah, for the days of local again.
ggw
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I hope you don’t mind me commenting here – your site popped up in my google news daily auto-email on “cloth nappies”.
The problem with the “nappies debate” is largely rooted in assumptions biased as much as possible toward single-use nappies.
The LCA results can be changed quite dramatically just by making very simple changes to the assumptions used in the EA study, such as:
– avoiding the unnecessary use of bleach and fabric softeners. “Sanitisers” are superfluous and damage both nappies and skin; fabric softeners coat fibres cause nappies to become less absorbent.
– using less detergent
– washing more than 12 nappies per machine load (why own 47 nappies and wash 12 at a time?)
– turning the hot water down a notch
– using a water- and energy-efficient washing machine
– hanging nappies to dry naturally where possible (UV light is a wonderful de-stainer and sanitiser)
– not ironing nappies (who does that?!)
– using nappies for 5-10 times as many changes instead of discarding them when they’re near-new
– choosing hemp or bamboo fabrics or organic cotton.
There is a lot more information here:
http://www.ozclothnappies.org/info#environment
http://www.wen.org.uk/general_pages/Newsitems/ms_LCA19.5.05.htm
http://realdiaperassociation.org/pressrelease_uk-diaperstudy.php
Regards
Lara
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>>"My guess is that well run environmentally concious farms will almost always out-perform small farms close to the markets, and they will do so using far less land. Simple economics tells the same story – big farms are more efficient and can produce and deliver food for a lower cost than local farms…"
You are by no means the first to make this guess, and although common logic might seem to indicate this being true, the reality is quite the opposite. One thing about nature, is her mysteries often defy common logic. Where modern man is used to calculating widgets per man-hour, in the agricultural realm things work quite differently. When I say ‘things’, I refer to the soil life upon which all agriculture depends. These creatures have their own laws and systems of working, and no manner of coercion on our part can change those laws. The most productive agricultural systems are those which work through observation and imitation – working in harmony with those laws, instead of trying to apply an industrial production-line approach. Modern large-scale agriculture has failed to realise its dream, and failed miserably.
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Craig: Thanks for the comment – Celsias is a stunning endeavour, and the soil article you linked to in particular is excellent. The Food First article on farm productivity is disingenuous though, avoiding a real comparison of farm productivity in first world countries.
So why should farmers bother with ‘sustainable’ farming when in their lifetime they can produce far more sheep/wheat/whatever per unit area than through organic methods?
The issue is that farmers are not confronted with the long term (or external) costs of large scale farming, such as soil degradation and carbon emmission. Obviously good farmers seek to minimise soil degradation in the medium term, but they confront no cost for carbon emmission.
I would also push back on whether large scale farming can in fact be sustainable – technology has a way of surprising us as Malthus found out.
The answer here is in public sector economics – the true cost of farming techniques needs to be passed on to farmers, through methods such as carbon taxes. Soil degradation is paid for by the difference between purchase and sale price of the land, but the time taken between those events may be too long for farmers to internalise. Taxing soil degradation (or giving tax breaks for positive behaviours) and introducing a carbon tax are of course politically extremely difficult (or impossible) in many countries, particularly the EU and USA where they still have the crippling farm subsidies.
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Lara
Thanks for the comments. The Cloth Nappies (or Diapers) versus Disposable Nappies debate is a ripper – and it will probably go on forever. I assume the diaper/nappy manufacturers are also not standing still and are producing more efficiently. The hybrid reusable/ flushable system looks like it combines elements of both systems and could be the most sustainable.
I would ask a more fundamental question – why do Western mothers use nappies/daipers for so long? You very rarely see 3rd world children walking around with nappies – they are toilet trained much earlier.
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Thanks for taking the time to read the Soil article. It’s a long one, but it’s a hard topic to keep short and yet do it justice. :)
Sorry re the FoodFirst link – I’ve looked it over again, and it isn’t as clear as I might have liked. Try this instead. You may also find this link an inspiring primer on the broad concepts, and how it relates not just to soil health, but also planet health (which by default includes the health of you and I, and the societies within which we reside).
Your readers may also find this article enlightening about some of the inherent stupidity in today’s long distance food transfers.
Best. :)
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Hey, while we’re on the nappy/diaper debate, have to concur with LW and can add 2 kids’ worth of practical experience. Better than disposable OR cloth is avoidance of use!
Even newborns can and will go in a potty (or whatever you gently hold them over often enough) and after a while will increasingly do that and avoid going in their pants. Check out http://www.diaperfreebaby.org/ for more info. (Or just try it without overeducating/worrying yourself.)
While all those cloth vs. dispo calculations are based on 8-10 diapers/day, we’re down to 1-2 diapers a day for our 9-month-old. No pressure and we’re all having fun with him not getting used to sitting in a mess and saving our environment.
Off my soapbox I step. Oh, the topics parents can go on about…
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