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This is in response to Brad Copenhaver’s column, “Local food movement neglects sound economics” (CT, Feb. 10). I disagree with the author’s opinion that local food “is not concurrent with ideas of economic efficiency and comparative advantage.” While we both agree that investment in local business allows for “keeping money circulating within a local region,” our opinions concerning fuel savings and Virginia seasonality differ.
In Blacksburg, a main source of local food is the year-round Blacksburg Farmers Market, located a block away from campus on Draper Road. The market requires that each vendor travel from within a 50-mile radius surrounding Blacksburg. In a conventional system, one pound of produce was found to have traveled at least 1,685 miles. By contributing fewer food miles, local food is able to decrease its ecological footprint, while often providing more fresh products, simply because of proximity.
Growing oranges in Virginia will not give a farmer a competitive price at the market, but neither will coffee, spices or chocolate grown in Virginia. These items are not meant to be grown in Virginia and therefore cannot be sourced locally.
For “locavores,” this does not mean chocolate or coffee are cut out of their diets, but instead, other alternatives are available. Fair trade and direct market products provide a way for consumers to support ecologically harvested products. Consumers do not meet their growers like they can at the market, but this is the next best alternative.
Rial Tombes
Junior
Environmental policy and planning major
A version of this article appeared in the Feb 18 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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One of many factors that always gets left out of this discussion is the difference in transportation methods. You can't simply compare food miles.
If we're going to compare sources, at least we need to compare apples to apples. Or how about tomatoes to tomatoes?
Say a farmer drives 10 bushels of tomatoes 50 miles to the farmer's market in a truck. This is roughly 500 lbs of tomatoes, and he travels 100 miles round trip, using 5 gallons of gas. So each pound of tomatoes "costs" 0.01 gallons of gas.
Compare that to a 53-foot trailer traveling 1685 miles with roughly 185000 lbs of tomatoes. From what I could find, fuel mileage is about 5 mpg for these trucks. So that's 337 gallons. The truck doesn't return empty, so we probably shouldn't count the round trip. But what the heck, for the sake of argument, count the whole round trip, so 674 gallons for 185000 lbs. That's still only 0.0036 gallons per pound, roughly 3 times less than the local farmer.
Of course, there are other factors pertaining to the energy and environmental efficiency of the farm itself, but I imagine that larger farms probably have higher efficiency in producing food as well.
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185,000 lbs of tomatoes!? Please tell me there's an extra zero in there. The DOT limits the gross weight of a semi to 80,000 lbs. The truck itself weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 lbs, leaving room for only 50,000 lbs of tomatoes (without an oversize load permit).
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Good catch. That was based on the volume capacity. What can I say: it was early. So roughly speaking, if we take 50000 lbs, it's 0.0135 gallons per pound. If we only count one-way fuel (since the truck would likely restock and begin another assignment upon delivery, it's 0.0068.
My numbers were flawed, but the fact remains that local transport of smaller quantities doesn't necessarily beat long-range transport of larger quantities. They're in the same ballpark based on the info in the article.
The point, overall, is that merely using food miles, without accounting for the quantity, is disingenuous and sounds like selective reporting to make local look better.
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Mr. Perspective, I'm guessing your major is basketweaving. Please confirm.
In all seriousness, using the numbers on the 53-foot trailer with 1685 miles to travel and a payload of 50,000 pounds at 5 miles to the gallon, you're looking at...0.00674 gallons per pound. It's fair to assume that the trailer will not be returning empty, so I would suggest neglecting the return trip.
Now for the farmer. We have to assume that not every farmer will be travelling from 50 miles away. Let's go with 25, on average, since it's halfway out. That's a 50 mile round trip. If you assume the same mpg as in your original calc (20 mpg), then you're looking at 2.5 gallons total fuel... resulting in 0.005 gallons per pound. But the farther out your mean travelling distance gets, the closer you get to the semi's numbers. Once your mean distance reaches 33.7, you're even.
Basically, you can spin this discussion however you like. I used my TI-89 for that.
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"Mr. Perspective, I'm guessing your major is basketweaving. Please confirm." Not so, though I did get a merit badge.
"Basically, you can spin this discussion however you like."
Exactly my point, but I would argue that at least I based my anecdotal result on a fair metric. By not using any sort of normalizing quantity such as weight, all you see is "50 miles" vs. "1685 miles." OMG, right?
I did not author an article setting out to rigorously prove that local is always worse; I am just offering a single counterexample to the argument presented, in which the author seems to conclude that local it is always better. The truth undoubtedly lies in between, and there are certainly other factors at play.
This type of statement is akin to saying that "every 10 minutes, someone in the US joins a suburban gang of ruffians that hang out in a treehouse." Sounds like a lot, right? Sure, and it is, but it's much more psychologically impactful to say this than to give a number like "1 in 5000 per year" or "0.02% of the population per year," which sound puny by comparison.
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Mr. Perspective,
Thank you for your statement, "The truth undoubtedly lies between." Finally, someone with a sense of humor and a willingness to look at things with some neutrality.
Counterpoint taken.
Currently, we are seeing both the government and private sector supporting a lot of green initiatives without doing the research to confirm they are, in fact, green (i.e. energy saving, thereby using less fossil fuel). A friend of mine is working on his PhD doing such research and is getting some interesting results.
The truth of the matter is, I like getting my produce from local farmers if I can. Often, it's just a better product than the same thing from a larger chain-store. I also like to buy "green," if there is viable proof, and I'll pay a bit more for it. However, I acknowledge that there is the possibility that something I purchase from Walmart may very well have a smaller environmental footprint than something I get from the farmers' market. It's just not a black and white issue, even though some would suggest it is.
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