Earth Equity News

New Finding: What You Eat Matters More Than Where It's Grown. By Erika Engelhaupt, Environmental Science & Technology, April 17, 2008. "It's how food is produced, not how far it is transported, that matters most for global warming, according to new research... In fact, eating less red meat and dairy can be a more effective way to lower an average U.S. household's food-related climate footprint than buying local food, says lead author Christopher Weber [and Scott Matthews] of Carnegie Mellon... [who] found that transportation creates only 11% of the 8.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases (in CO2 equivalents) that an average U.S. household generates annually as a result of food consumption [while] the agricultural and industrial practices that go into growing and harvesting food are responsible for most (83%) of its greenhouse gas emissions... Edgar Hertwich, an expert on life-cycle analysis who is at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, calls the results 'quite convincing' but notes that consumers should still keep an eye on food flown on airplanes, which have very high greenhouse gas emissions... 'It's still useful to think about transport,' says David Pimentel of Cornell, an ecologist who has conducted life-cycle analyses of food's energy use."