An Organic, Local Thanksgiving
I hope it's not too soon to be thinking about Thanksgiving. But for those of you who like to plan ahead, there was a nifty little article in Saturday's P-I on buying locally grown food for the annual harvest-fest.
The article was much more than the usual puff piece. I mean, sure, there was the obligatory paean or two to the scrappy local organic farmer. But what made this article extra tasty was that it in addition to the platitudes, it served up a delicious, heaping helping of...data. Mmmm, data!!
Apparently, some UW researchers have tallied the greenhouse gas benefits of local, organic produce -- that is, they calculated climate-warming emissions that are avoided when buying local rather than imported foods, and buying organic fruits and veggies rather than produce grown with synthetic pesticdes and fertilizers.
In every case, the more local food was better for the climate than the food shipped long distance, and the organic produce was more climate-friendly than the conventional. But the patterns were interesting, and not exactly what I would have expected.
