Will I save the planet by eating local?

Supporting local producers is undoubtedly an important way of boosting the region's economy and promoting food sovereignty. But does eating local really have a significant environmental impact?

There is a strong belief that choosing locally produced food is one of the most effective ways of reducing our ecological footprint. However, this idea is not supported by scientific evidence. The environmental impact of transporting food is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, much less than we think.

For most food products, transportation represents less than 10% of their total carbon footprint (see red bars in Figure 1). And even if you add up all the stages that take place after the food leaves the farm - such as processing, packaging, distribution and sale - the contribution to emissions is still relatively small. The main environmental impact is almost always at the agricultural production stage, especially in the case of animal products.

There are exceptions - such as food transported by plane. But these are residual in the global panorama. They represent only 0.16% of the distances traveled by food worldwide (Poore & Nemecek, 2018). In fact, much of the food that is presumed to come by air actually arrives by sea, with a much lower environmental impact.

Therefore, more than “eating local”, it's important to understand what you eat. The diet's composition plays an incomparably greater role than the geographical origin of the food. The evidence is clear: reducing the consumption of animal products - particularly meat and dairy products - is one of the most effective ways of reducing the ecological footprint of food. And within the meat group, beef stands out as the most damaging to the environment.

Finally, I want to emphasize that this is not about downplaying the importance of local production, as it has its value - economically, socially and, in certain contexts, even ecologically. However, when the aim is to reduce the environmental impact of our food, the key question is not “where was it produced?”, but “what kind of food am I choosing?”.

Figure 1 - Greenhouse gas emissions along the food supply chain (the red bar represents transportation)

Reference:

Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Share of global food miles by transport method. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method