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July 18, 2005
Survive Locally
This would make a great reality TV show: As chronicled in online magazine the Tyee, a couple in British Columbia decides that for one year they will only eat food that is grown or raised within a 100-mile radius of where they live--with a few exceptions.
Why? The short answer is "fossil fuels bad." The average American (and probably Canadian) meal, they point out, uses 17 times more petroleum products than an entirely local meal. And:
Let's translate that into the ecological footprint model devised by Dr. William Rees of UBC which measures how many planets'-worth of resources would be needed if everyone did the same. If you had an average North American lifestyle in every other way, from driving habits to the size of your house, by switching to a local diet you would save almost an entire planet's worth of resources (though you'd still be gobbling up seven earths).
And how hard could it be to eat within 100 miles? After all, they live in an area rich in fertile farmland and seas. They imagined they would eat seasonally, their table heavy with the best produce, fish, and free-range meat that British Columbia has to offer, even while their neighbors were chomping on cardboard tomatoes flown in from Mexico and California.
It turns out it’s both difficult and expensive. Local grains don’t exist, except for a few heritage grains. Yes, there are local free-range cows and chickens, but the animals are raised on non-local feed. In summer, BC's abundant farmer's markets serve them well, but many of the supermarkets still sell much shipped produce, except for, say, local organic salad mix at $17.99 a pound. Summer, of course, only lasts so long.
And here’s the kicker: Vegetarianism doesn’t work well because soy isn’t grown locally. So they’re forced to ask this question: “Does vegetarianism fit into a local, sustainable diet?” And the answer isn’t clear at all. (Part II--"Wanted: A Perfectly Local Chicken"--covers this tricky issue.)
Their few exceptions--and funny moments, such as an attempt to make strawberry preserves with honey--begin adding up. Their butts also begin to shrink. (Add a diet book to the reality TV show .)
Their experiment points (again) to this fact: Eating is complicated for thoughtful people who believe that everyday actions such as buying food have a heck of an impact on the world. On the other hand, just the fact that they're attempting the feat, and that they have an attentive audience, bodes well for efforts to limit our impacts.
I happened to pick up a July 2005 copy of Gourmet magazine this week, and noticed that writer Bill McKibben was trying a similar experiment in the Vermont/Lake Champlain area. Interestingly, his take was more positive than the BC couple's. Does that mean that Vermont is ahead of BC in small-scale food production?
Posted by Elisa Murray | Permalink
Comments
Vegetarianism is a contentious issue. The bottom line seems to be that those who enjoy meat will find all sorts of excuses to avoid not eating it.
I am more comfortable with someone who butchers their own chickens that have been grain-free/free-range fed, or shoots (with bow and arrow, please) their own wild deer, or eats free-range goats that have been keeping invasive exotic plants at bay. (In true permaculture fashion, the chickens and goats are multiple-use resources, NOT factory-farm meat.) And as an experiment, the "100 mile diet" may indeed seem to rule out vegetarianism, due only to an arbitrary rule.
But the argument that vegetarianism is somehow less "green" simply because you haven't found a way to do it on a 100 mile diet has lots of holes -- especially if the justification for the 100 mile diet is energy use.
It takes at least TEN TIMES as much energy to produce vegetable protein as it takes to run it through an animal. [Pimentel, Cornell University, et. al.] Therefore, I would submit that if the rationale for your 100 mile diet is energy conservation, you should expand it to a 1,000 mile diet for certain forms of vegetable protein that are difficult to obtain within the 100 mile limit.
If you manage to find local meat, fed locally, just 100 miles away, it might as well have been vegetable protein from 1,000 miles away, based on the energy consumed to produce it.
Posted by: Jan Steinman | Jul 18, 2005 11:08:17 AM
Important post Elisa. It is informative to illustrate just how far we as a society have to go to (so to speak) before we can eat locally.
Another concern is the control of seeds by agribusiness. If future fuel costs preclude transshipments of food products, it will be crucial to have grain varieties adapted to local conditions - degree days, humidity tolerance (and fungal resistance), ease of milling.
Also, in the future, we will have to re-learn how to can and preserve, and how to garden well. The Internets will be a boon, because of the need for information-sharing: how to repel pests, how to extend the season, when to best harvest for different preservation methods, when to plant what variety, etc.
I think greenhouse skills and technologies will be important in this future as well - esp. WRT insulation and maximizing light intensity, in addition to using attached greenhouses to heat our living spaces.
Posted by: Dan Staley | Jul 18, 2005 11:14:57 AM
The ecology, the environment and the economy all are far too complex for any one individual to regulate. When Soviet regulation of the economy failed so ignominously, commie followers decided to take their "skills" to the energy and enviromnment field where their decisions have been every bit as stupid.
Years ago, a reporter was going to drift down the Sacramento river from Redding, living off the land. He snt in reports for a week or so chronicling his adventures, until another paper discovered he had come down with the trots and other stuff the second day out and was writing from a motel room.
Posted by: Walter E. Wallis | Jul 18, 2005 11:37:14 AM
A correction to Jan's comments... I believe you mean to say it takes ten times the amount of energy to create animal protein, not vegetable protein. And as for my comments on this 100-mile radius diet: why would one say they can only be vegetarian with soy? Are we still this uneducated about protein sources? Furthermore, a diet of animals/animal products will never be as sustainable (if at all) as a pure vegetarian diet. Go to http://www.goveg.com/feat/enviro.html
Posted by: Jenna Facciuto | Jul 19, 2005 10:10:03 AM
Good clarification, Jenna. Some animal systems are far higher than ten times energy inputs. Considering just water, animal protein needs 10 times the water that plant protein needs.
Wendell Berry has numerous eloquent essays that include the concept of sustainable animal husbandry for work, fertilizer, and food.
In a future world of reduced fossil fuel utilization, fertilizer will have to come from somewhere. I rarely eat meat, so I'm not defending the practice, just pointing out the boundaries of the box.
Posted by: Dan Staley | Jul 19, 2005 11:46:46 AM
hmmm...HTML doesn't work in comments.
Links:
Good clarification, Jenna. Some animal systems are far higher than ten times energy inputs (1). Considering just water, animal protein needs 10 times the water that plant protein needs.
Wendell Berry (2) has numerous eloquent essays (3,4) that include the concept of sustainable animal husbandry for work, fertilizer, and food.
In a future world of reduced fossil fuel utilization, fertilizer will have to come from somewhere. I rarely eat meat, so I'm not defending the practice, just pointing out the boundaries of the box.
1. [http://collections.ic.gc.ca/highway/english/energy/live.html ]
2. [http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/berry198.htm ]
3. [http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/02-3om/Berry.html]
4. [http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/issues/berry206.htm]
Posted by: Dan Staley | Jul 19, 2005 12:10:18 PM
Building on Dan Staley's comments:
Things really aren't so black and white when it comes to energy inputs for protein cultivation. Here in Northern California, my neighbor raises grass-fed beef on about a hundred acres of pastureland that are irrigated only by our seasonal rainfall. Fossil fuel inputs are basically limited to the tractor that cuts and bales the hay each June and hauls it to the barn. Steers and heifers are slaughtered as yearlings (ca. 18 months old), when a mobile abbatoir comes to the ranch.
Seems like a bit closer to sustainability than center-pivot irrigated soy fields in the middle of Kansas.
Take home message: energy inputs and ecological footprints of animal and vegetable diets are highly dependent on the particulars of how the food is raised -- which also seems like a message that the Vancouver couple was illuminating when they went searching for eggs laid by chickens fed on a local diet.
Posted by: Seth Zuckerman | Jul 21, 2005 10:57:12 AM
Jan Steinman writes: "I am more comfortable with someone who butchers their own chickens that have been grain-free/free-range fed, or shoots (with bow and arrow, please) their own wild deer ... "
Whence the idea that killing deer with a bow is environmentally and/or morally superior to killing them with a gun?
I'm not a hunter, but during my life I have known many hunters of all types, including bow hunters and rifle hunters. A deer shot with an arrow is likely to endure a much more prolonged and painful death than one accurately shot with a rifle. The former also is likely to wander off and die hours or days later in a spot where the hunter has not been able to track it; thus the deer's meat -- and life -- are wasted.
Posted by: H B Miller | Jul 22, 2005 3:02:59 PM
Before anyone gets all bent out of shape, it would be useful to actually read the post that Elisa links to re: the "Perfectly Local Chicken". The folks trying the 100-mile diet have been "near-vegans" for 15 years. They are not meat-eaters trying to justify their meat-eating. They are vegetarians trying to square their vegetarianism with their attempt to eat locally. As they describe, it is challenging to find meat or vegetable protein sources that are raised within 100 miles of them.
But these simplistic Pimentel-based energetics arguments about the energy use of meat protein production (as if there were only one method of production) versus vegetable protein production really need to be challenged. This may be true for factory farm production, but I would be very surprised if this were true for grass-based animal husbandry. Even if the energy in the grass that the cow consumes is greater than the energy that we get from the cow, this is mooooot because we can't convert grass energy to usable energy, but cows and other ruminants can. And before you say that we should grow wheat or soybeans in that pasture, think about whether high-intensity cultivated agriculture is really preferable for all arable land. It is most certainly not, especially for steep slopes or erodible land.
Seth says it better and briefer than I do, but I just felt the need to rant as well. Having known many hunters, I also concur with H.B. There is nothing inherently superior about bows & arrows vs. a gun, if taking a life while causing the least suffering is the goal.
Posted by: Dave Hockman-Wert | Jul 22, 2005 4:57:54 PM
High transportation prices leading to more local food sources doesn't mean we *all* have to learn to can and hunt. Even a small town has enough people (ex long-haulers?) for a local canning & butchering business. Preserving warrants a purpose-built kitchen, and we aren't going to all build summer kitchens for putting up, esp. not if material is pricier.
Our sentimental memory of home preserving being cheap may descend from farms so isolated they couldn't trade, but I suspect it depended more recently on unpaid female labor.
Posted by: clew | Jul 25, 2005 4:31:41 PM
clew has a good point: we won't all hunt, fish, can, harvest in the future. Some will, some won't. The ones that won't may have other skills they can trade for food.
Just like today, only without the ability to trade across the planet (and with more enlightened interpersonal interactions). We will need a variety of skills, just like today.
Posted by: Dan Staley | Jul 26, 2005 9:33:56 AM
A very interesting experiment. I wonder how they'll do in winter?
As to vegetarianism and local food: I'm a vegetarian myself, but I really doubt it's a pratcial solution for this local food experiment, because of the area they live in. If you look at traditional cultures around the world, the amount of calories people got from plant products decreases as you move toward the poles (compare equatorial African tribes with the Inuit, for an extreme example). Though they may well find enough protein/fat/calories from fish.
Posted by: Erin | Oct 19, 2005 12:42:26 PM