+ Notes on Food and Transportation

Not all energy conscious folks read the NY Times, so I thought I'd post a link to an interesting article on how the "greenest" food choice isn't always so obvious. Check out the article: If It's Fresh and Local, Is It Always Greener? by Andrew Martin at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/business/yourmoney/09feed.html

Mr. Martin cites various studies exploring the issues surrounding the carbon footprint of foodstuffs. It turns out that foodstuffs from farther away aren't necessarily less carbon-conscious . Mr. Martin found various researchers studying this on a rigorous academic level and their findings are worth considering. Just one of the issues is transportation energy, which I've been looking into (and finding out that ocean and rail transport can be fairly efficient). As Mr. Martin passed along:

"An Iowa State University study in 2003 found that most produce travels about 1,500 miles before it arrives in Iowa homes. But as the strawberry story suggests, some of it creates higher amounts of greenhouse gases than others. Transporting food by container ship or rail is relatively energy efficient. Shipping it by air or a 25-year-old pickup is not."

At the excellent website of container shipping giant MaerskLine, (http://www.maerskline.com/link/?page=brochure&path=/about_us/environment/efficient_transportation)
I came across a comparison indicating that while the latest container ships consume about one-tenth as much energy as a truck to ship a ton of cargo 1 kilometer, a 747 airfreighter consumes over 10 times as much as a truck, which works out to 100 times as much as a ship. (We'll be looking more at MaerskLines' highly efficient system in future postings.)

Mr. Martin observed:
"Europeans are way ahead of us on this issue. Already, some grocery stores in England offer airplane labels, signifying that a product was shipped by air, or carbon reduction labels, showing that the manufacturer vows to reduce carbon emissions. Both labels will inevitably make their way to American stores."

If produce can be shipped efficiently by the global or national intermodal network, it's carbon footprint can still be okay. The key issues seem to be how it got to your grocer, and how carbon intensive it was to grow or raise.