Thanks to economies of scale, driving to your local farm to pick up groceries is VASTLY worse for the environment than trucking it to a supermarket and picking up everything there.
The final leg of the trip is by far the worst in terms of resource depletion. Shipping goods across half the world is hyper-efficient, in a slow ship that’s mostly cargo and floating on water. But driving to the store of market means you’re moving 2 tons of metal at 90mph, stopping and starting it repeatedly to pick up 400 grams of tomatoes.
The farmer’s market is by far the worst here, since is usually involves a small truck moving the product to multiple locations for a single sale, and then transporting it by private vehicles again. Even growing it at home is mediocre at best, assuming you need to drive to pick up seeds, soil and fertilizer. And growing food at home doesn’t reduce your grocery-store trips, you’re still moving your 2-ton car there, only instead of tomatoes, potatoes, beef and bread, you’re only picking up potatoes, beef and bread. You’re basically adding 2 trips to the garden store to your travels and subtracting nothing.
Shipping goods across half the world is hyper-efficient, in a slow ship that’s mostly cargo and floating on water.
Cargo ships are financially efficient, sure. But in large part that’s because the fuel it uses is subsidized by the rest of the oil industry (it’s so cheap because it’s a byproduct of producing oil that can’t be used anywhere else) and it’s incredibly toxic and polluting. International supply chains in general are both taxed and subsidized primarily for political reasons - economic or environmental efficiency or the lack thereof are byproducts of governments acting in their own interests to facilitate or limit trade. I really wouldn’t point to any of that as a positive.
I get your point about transportation efficiencies and so forth. And yes, we need public transit, we need bicycles, we need denser housing and more efficient last step supply chains and generally to end personal ownership of automobiles because they’re profoundly wasteful. That doesn’t make eating locally bad, nor does it make the desire to shorten supply chains in general a bad aspiration.
Thanks to economies of scale, driving to your local farm to pick up groceries is VASTLY worse for the environment than trucking it to a supermarket and picking up everything there.
The final leg of the trip is by far the worst in terms of resource depletion. Shipping goods across half the world is hyper-efficient, in a slow ship that’s mostly cargo and floating on water. But driving to the store of market means you’re moving 2 tons of metal at 90mph, stopping and starting it repeatedly to pick up 400 grams of tomatoes.
The farmer’s market is by far the worst here, since is usually involves a small truck moving the product to multiple locations for a single sale, and then transporting it by private vehicles again. Even growing it at home is mediocre at best, assuming you need to drive to pick up seeds, soil and fertilizer. And growing food at home doesn’t reduce your grocery-store trips, you’re still moving your 2-ton car there, only instead of tomatoes, potatoes, beef and bread, you’re only picking up potatoes, beef and bread. You’re basically adding 2 trips to the garden store to your travels and subtracting nothing.
Cargo ships are financially efficient, sure. But in large part that’s because the fuel it uses is subsidized by the rest of the oil industry (it’s so cheap because it’s a byproduct of producing oil that can’t be used anywhere else) and it’s incredibly toxic and polluting. International supply chains in general are both taxed and subsidized primarily for political reasons - economic or environmental efficiency or the lack thereof are byproducts of governments acting in their own interests to facilitate or limit trade. I really wouldn’t point to any of that as a positive.
I get your point about transportation efficiencies and so forth. And yes, we need public transit, we need bicycles, we need denser housing and more efficient last step supply chains and generally to end personal ownership of automobiles because they’re profoundly wasteful. That doesn’t make eating locally bad, nor does it make the desire to shorten supply chains in general a bad aspiration.