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Stewardship Tip – Buying Local vs. Dietary Shift
By Arshia | August 23, 2011
The issue of “food-miles”, a rough measure of how far food travels between its production location and the final consumer, has been a consistent fixture in the debate on food sustainability. There are more variables that contribute to the overall footprint of food, though.
Research by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, for example, indicates that the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced during the production phase contribute 83% to the average U.S. household’s footprint for food consumption. Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of GHG emissions. Final delivery from producer to retailer contributes only 4%.
The results of Weber and Matthew’s analysis show that, for the average American household, buying local could achieve, at best, around a 4-5% reduction in GHG emissions. They note that certain food groups, such as red meat and dairy products, contribute a greater amount of CO2 per dollar spent and add that shifting to other protein sources less than one day per week could have the same climate impact as buying all household food from local providers.
Why it is important to the fish: Since the start of the industrial revolution, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from 280 parts per million (ppm) to current levels of about 388 ppm. The oceans absorb CO2 naturally. This helps to mitigate the effects of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. However, dissolving CO2 in seawater increases the concentration of hydrogen ions. This decreases pH. The oceans’ preindustrial average surface pH was about 8.179; the current average is in the neighborhood of 8.069. This process is known as ocean acidification.
As the pH of the ocean falls, so does the concentration of carbonate. When carbonate becomes undersaturated, structures made of calcium carbonate are vulnerable to dissolution. This, according to the NOAA, leads to
A drop in the rate at which reef-building corals produce skeletons,
A reduction in the ability of marine algae and free-swimming zooplankton to maintain protective shells, and
A reduction in the survival of larval marine species, including commercial fish and shellfish.
According to scientist Thomas Lovejoy, ocean acidification pulls “the rug out from under the marine food chain.”
A simple switch from dairy and red meat only one day per week can help to reduce your CO2 footprint and help to reduce ocean acidification
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