Low Carbon Eating

My car-free year is proving to be about more than just my own travel. It's true that transportation is the biggest contributor to global warming in the Pacific Northwest. But it's also true that "we are what we eat", and that we need to pay closer attention to how far and by what means our food is transported. What we eat, it turns out, is as much a "transportation choice" as how we get ourselves from Point A to Point B.

I learned a lot about the importance of food choices to climate change in an article by Natalie Reitman-White and Sarah Mazze called Global Warming & Food Choices: A Guide to Low-Carbon Eating. The concept of "food miles" puts a new wrinkle in my notion of what constitutes a "travel fast". I may be staying put, but if the food I eat comes from halfway around the world, and especially if it is flown to me, my food (to paraphrase Michael Pollan) is marinated in crude oil by the time it reaches my table.

I didn't realize until recently what a huge ecological issue industrial food production actually is, and what a major contributor to global warming. Here are a few facts from the article:

• Fossil fuel is involved at all stages of food production, from plowing and fertilizing to processing and packaging of food - and every phase of transportation from field to consumer's table
• Agriculture accounts for a whopping 7% of total Greenhouse Gas Emmisions in the U.S, not counting food transportation
• Organic farming techniques have the potential to use 30 - 50 % less energy than non-organic farming
•  Airfreight has the highest carbon emissions of any form of transport, generating up to 177 times the emissions of shipping the same goods by freighter
  
• Livestock add about 80% of agriculture's total contribution to GHG emissions
• 23% of energy used in food production is for processing and packaging

As important as my personal transportation choices are, this tells me it's time for me to think a lot harder about the carbon footprint of my eating choices as well. It's added impetus for me to get out and pitch in more with my wife Sally in our family vegetable garden too!