Ethicurean: Eating Local isn't about Greenhouse Gases

Ethicurean, the group blog dedicated to the notion of food mindfulness, or, as they so artfully put it, "Chew the Right Thing", responds to Dubner's post in the New York Times Freaknomics blog.

Well, not directly. They respond to the same peer reviewed study that Dubner cites in his blog, namely "Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States," by Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews.

The paper does note that the last miles to the table are not the major source of greenhouse gas emissions... agricultural inputs are. So you make more of a "green" impact by reducing consumption of red meat (since you're using a lot less agricultural inputs (fertilizer) to grow soy and corn which is fed to methane-producing cattle) than by buying local.

Ethicurean doesn't disagree. But their analysis of the paper doesn't lead them to the conclusion that local isn't better. There are other quality of life reasons for eating locally (which Dubner doesn't address... since he sticks to simple economics).

Ethicurean also stands up to Salon's recent attack on localvores here:
http://www.ethicurean.com/2008/06/28/salon-locavore/

A dissenting commenter on this latter post dismisses the food miles issue and notes: "I buy food at farmers markets. Mostly for the reason you mention: it's picked later and thus tastes better."

A Locavore's Meat of the Month Club

Over at The Ethicurean, Bonnie Powell announces the start of a new Community Supported Agriculture program that features sustainably grown meat.

The backstory is amazing, which bring to light many of the logistical difficulties of attempting a "cow share," or any kind of subscription program that involves large meat animals (as well as remind the average grocery store buyer that they really don't know where meat comes from). Where do you find a slaughterhouse? How do you divide up beef ribs into 40 subscriptions? (Here's her 2006 post on what to do with an order of 660 pounds of beef and lamb.) Who gets the hog skin? But... it's fascinating to see that the 75 member Bay Area Meat CSA not only has a waiting list, but an email subscriber base of more than 500 people!

New CSA starting in Tomales, based at Clark Summit Farm. You can sign up now, but hurry, they have to cap these subscriptions. Details at Bonnie's post, plus links to other local Meat CSAs.