2 March 2025

This week, we’ll be “springing forward” our clocks for daylight saving time (March 8 at 2 am), but there’s still a chill in the air, to put it mildly! Still, the occasional warm[er] day - plus activity of birds, squirrels and the melting of snow and ice to reveal growing vegetation beneath - reminds us that winter is not eternal in the Northeast.

Like me, you may be thinking about farmers markets, or even the arrival of local food in your supermarket. I used to do an exercise with my class at Westchester Community College where the students choose a food and then pace out the “food miles” it has traveled to be here (obviously, scaled). It’s both amazing and shocking to learn that many of the foods we rely on regularly travel halfway around the world - and sometimes ingredients travel one way and then back again in the finished product!

Should we consider food miles when choosing foods to protect the planet? Studies have estimated that the transport component ranges from 5% to 20% of a food’s impact. The high end is only if you include the transport of equipment and fertilizer to the places when the food is grown, harvested and prepared for consumer - and those don’t necessarily go away if you purchase locally.

So food miles have little - but some - impact. Here I want to remind you of NRDC’s one-minute docudrama, The Life of a Strawberry. With food waste creating 24% of methane emissions (which traps at least 28X more heat than carbon dioxide) in landfills, making use of what we have seems like a better bang for our climate-friendly buck. Sure, you can compost your food scraps (if you have facilities in your town), but that is nowhere near as convenient as buying what you need and eating what you have (and if you cost it out, you’re paying for some very expensive fertilizer).

The type of food and the way it is grown also have major effects on its potential benefit or harm to the planet. For example, the production of local grass-fed beef results in greenhouse gas emissions far greater than those of a veggie burger from across the country. And also…a potato is better than a potato chip, which likely had many more inputs during its journey to our shopping cart. Getting into the minutiae of climate impacts for each food may not be practical, but we can look at aspects that have the greatest potential to reduce them.

Seasonal foods - even if they are grown somewhere else - don’t require energy-intensive greenhouses. Mushrooms, which can be grown indoors year-round, require minimal land and water, have a low carbon footprint and are natural waste recyclers.

The biggest impact - after avoiding food waste - comes from choosing plant predominant. Per pound of protein, beef emits 25X more greenhouse gases than tofu, uses 74X more land and 15X more water. Simple swaps can make a difference - both to personal and planetary health - and this is true at any point along the whole food plant based spectrum. If you’re curious about the climate impacts of some of your favorite foods, check out this interactive chart.

Choosing local may not save the planet - at least not within the context of our current food system - but it has other benefits. Fresher food retains more nutrients, the local farmer may be more likely to use regenerative methods (and you can ask!), and there would seem to be a deeper connection that comes from knowing the nearby origin of our food. Shopping at your farmers market also puts money directly in the hands of those who grow our food, while the majority of our food supply is controlled by a few large corporations.

I’m definitely looking forward to spring farmers markets, possibly acquiring a garden allotment in my community (I’m on the waitlist), and seeing more local vegetables at the supermarket. In the meantime, sprouts, a high protein superfood, can be grown right on my kitchen counter.