Does The 100 Mile Diet Reduce Your Carbon Footprint?
Friday August 14th, 2009 // Written by Odum
A couple of days ago I was attending a talk at the University given by a fellow graduate student discussing the issue of sustainable farming. It was an interesting talk that went over the history of human farming practices and how farming can develop sustainably in the future. But the most interesting part of the talk was the discussion where many people had some very interesting ideas and questions about farming. And what I found most interesting was a brief discussion of the 100 mile diet.
If you are unfamiliar with the premise behind this diet it is basically how it sounds, you can only eat food that is grown within 100 miles of where you live, or 161 km as I prefer. The premise behind the diet, among other things, is that you’ll be benefiting the environment by not supporting foods that are shipped great distances by plane and truck, thus reducing your carbon footprint (there are other benefits as well, visit 100 mile diet to see what they are).
Getting back to the talk, someone in the audience spoke of a study that claimed the 100 mile diet was in fact not beneficial for the environment. The reasoning behind this claim was that people on the diet would be driving much greater distances trying to find all the foods they need and would therefore be producing much more green house emissions than what they normally would produce if doing their shopping at the local grocers. Thus the excess emissions caused by people on the diet would be greater than the emissions used to ship all their food from out of the country to their local grocer.
Unfortunately I couldn’t get the source of this study from the audience member (they didn’t remember), but I’m quite intrigued to find out so I’m currently looking for it and when I find it I’ll be sure to post what it says.
The question that I have is could this be true? Would the carbon footprint of someone on the 100 mile diet really be bigger than if they were not on it?
What do you think?
7 comments in the discussion so far...
What do you have to say about it? Don't be shy, join the converstation, we'd love to hear what you think.
Loading ...
I think there is something to that.
and could never enterain the idea at schopping only at overpriced farmers markets.
If you drove (I presume) 20 miles to buy 3 punnets of berries and x your emmissions by however many other people do that against one large container being deliverd to a shop…. I’m no maths wiz but it could be a very grey area.
Where I live if I stuck by the 100 mile rule I would have no tomatos, no bananas (nooooo!!) no sweet potatos, no rice or pasta, Id probably struggle to get wheat, I’d be on very limited on fruit and even that would only be for a tiny proportion of the year.
And of course, Scotland is not famous for its vinyards so no wine
The other thing is basic costs.
We are officialy on the “poverty line” here (although we don’t feel it
This magazine http://www.permaculture-magazine.co.uk/back%20issues/back_issues.html ran a feature on someone who lived a year on a 100 mile diet, but it was expensive and limited.
I think the best you can do is use common sense, eat local in season, try to limit out of season and exotics, but don’t beat yourself over the head with your fair trade organic bananas
I agree Kelly that the 100 mile diet can really be difficult or even next to impossible depending on your geographical location. I like your idea of trying to do what you can based on what is around you.
You also raise another interesting point – why do local foods cost so much? The cost of transporting their goods has to be less so why the excess cost? Maybe I’ll get food shipped to me from Scotland and you get some from Canada than we’ll both get good deals
Hi Odum – This is one article I’ve seen recently arguing that the local diet is in fact not environmentally friendly:
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/07/22/consumer-local-food.html?ref=rss
Nonetheless, I really enjoy buying local food at the farmer’s market and freezing or canning it for the winter, partly because it’s local and partly because I know how it’s been preserved. That said, I also like to drink a coffee or tea once in a while (or put salt on my food, for that matter!).
Hey Loren,
Nice article, thanks for the link. Certainly provides more insight into the debate.
I’ve never been on the 100 mile diet and can’t see me ever starting, but I’m like you and I like buying local knowing how my food has been grown and what has been put into it.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a much more sustainable view on eating local. Maybe not atainable….but certainly sustainable and with a smaller carbon footprint
I think it would depend on how you shop locally. Driving to one market or mennonite stand and planning your menu around what you were able to find there is probably better than driving all over the countryside looking for specific items. Plus, you’re supporting local businesses/families.
But would people really limit what they eat with what they can find at only one or maybe two markets? Not to mention what they would do in the winter when there are very little markets around (if any at all).
This is an interesting topic which I’ll be sure to keep a close eye on and post more about in the near future.