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Eat Local, Eat Less Meat, Lower Carbon Footprint
Posted Dec 4, 2008
Environmental activists are encouraging Americans to buy more locally grown
products to lower climate-changing emissions. But could a shift in the American
diet be even more effective? Yes, according to a study published in the journal
Environmental Science and Technology. As VOA's Rosanne Skirble reports, the
study found that red meat and dairy products are responsible for nearly half of
all greenhouse gas emissions from the food an average American household
consumes.
There is an environmental cost in just moving food from the farm to your table.
The farther food travels, the greater the emissions from the truck or boat or
plane that carries it. The argument goes, if you could minimize that energy use,
you could minimize the associated carbon dioxide emissions, says Christopher
Weber, associate professor of environmental and civil engineering at Carnegie
Mellon University and the study's lead author.
"This isn't just transporting from the pig farm to the person, but transporting
the feed from the corn field to the pig, transporting the fertilizer from the
fertilizer manufacturer to the corn field and vice versa, going all the way back
to, say, moving the oil from Saudi Arabia to the U.S.," he says.
The researchers looked at the total life cycle of greenhouse gases emitted to
produce the food consumed by an average American household. It turns out that
transportation as a whole is not the main offender. It accounts for about 11
percent of those food-related emissions, with only 4 percent in the final
delivery stage from producer to retailer. Agricultural and production practices
are responsible for almost all the rest.
Weber says methane and nitrous oxide from farm animals - in their manure - is
far more polluting than the most familiar greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.
"These animals are producing a lot of manure which, if it is not handled
correctly, which more often than not in this country is true, it produces
methane and nitrous oxide, which are 20 and 200 times as potent as CO2," he
says.
Simply put, red meat is far more greenhouse-gas-intensive than all other foods,
and Weber says, "You can have a much bigger impact by eating less grain-fed red
meat and dairy in your diet than you can by eating locally."
Weber says a shift from beef to chicken, fish or eggs, or a vegetable-based diet
just one day a week would have more impact on the environment than buying all
household food locally for an entire year.
"That would reduce your total impact by about 1,000 miles [1,600 kilometers] a
year in a standard car," he says.
If the average household were to shift totally away from red meat and dairy
toward a vegetarian diet or one with some chicken, fish and eggs in it, that
would amount to driving 8,000 fewer miles, or 13,000 kilometers.
Weber has taken that message to heart. He eats no red meat and prepared his
vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner with locally grown produce, knowing his carbon
footprint would be lighter.
"I haven't actually gone and done the actual calculations of how this would
compare to a traditional meal, but I am fairly confident that it would be
considerably lower," he says.
Weber says in the next step of his research, he hopes to address the emissions
impact of land use and different agricultural practices.
Copyright © 2008 Federal Information & News Dispatch, Inc.
Date: Dec 2, 2008
© 2008 Content Works. All Rights Reserved
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