It is much more efficient to grow wheat in the wheat belt on large mechanized farms and ship flour to consumer markets. The inefficiencies of small farmers growing grains would not make up for the savings in transport.
In many regions (I'm in NY metro) there isn't enough arable land near by to support the population, especially in winter.
I'm all for eating fresh vegetables in season and encouraging farmers to cater to this market, but moderation in all things. There needs to be a balance. The best way to cut down on excessive transport is to price things accordingly. I don't know how to do this, winter strawberries come from South America or Mexico where labor is cheap.
My pet peeve is bottled water. When you find a way to get rid of this foolishness then perhaps we can address excessive transport of food.
The agribusiness is yet another example of negative externalities not being factored into the final price. Perhaps rising fuel costs will cause this type of activity to become self limiting. More important is what to do about the poor regions of the world which can't produce enough food because of environmental or political reasons and can't afford to pay for imports. Buying your cabbage locally won't solve this problem. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
Ultimately, I suspect you'll be proven right. Bulk staples and other things that store well will be centrally produced using sustainable methods in places where it makes sense to do so, and shipped slowly to the places that need to consume them. Spices and other low-volume, low perishability items probably fall into the same category. What needs to stop is the central industrial production and long-distance high-speed transport of perishables - meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, dairy, etc.
Isn't the best way of reducing the environmental impact of agriculture to industrialise food production more, not less?
Inefficient, local (organic) agriculture must be more energy intensive simply due to the lower yields and increased number of food journeys.
The paragon of 'ethical' living who only eats organic locally produced food, who goes to the farmers market to pick out a some choice organic produce before going to the baker and the greengrocer will have a far greater environmental impact than the person who goes to the biggest supermarket they can find and stocks up for two weeks on non-organic mass-produced food which is shipped from accross the world. Although the former will doubtless eat better.
If the environmental impact is key then the number of 'miles' travelled by your cut of lamb is entirely irrelevant - what's important is the emmissions per kilo. A huge container ship has so much produce on board that its emmissions per kilo of food or per calorie are miniscule (especially when compared with the farmers van taking a small amount of produce to the market to be bought by shoppers who mainly drive to the market).
Air-freighted vegetables and fruit are heavy on carbon use but I think its a small price to pay for much needed employment in Africa/ Latin America.
Even better if you can order the food online and have it delivered to your house by a big van (the bigger the better, providing deliveries are efficiently organised).
Ethical consumption seems to fail everywhere due to its unintended consequences: Organic production reduces yields and increases prices (even for non-organic produce). Fair trade distorts price signals and allows a few priviledged producers to benefit while the majority loose out (due to lower prices). Localism increases carbon emmissions.
Maybe we should ask our Governments to lead on these issues with an international carbon tax.
Proof by assertion is nonsense.
Further, there are questions of sustainability for industrial agriculture, on all sorts of fronts.
