Food Miles, the Fertilizer Crisis, and Other F-Words
plus: please tell me your favorite healing tea ❤️
Well, everyone, it’s been quite the month. There’s been a lot going on in the world (the hellfire that is SCOTUS decisions, for one thing) and a lot going on in my little own world (catching C*VID after avoiding it for 2.5 years, for another). Understandably, I’ve been a bit tired.
My first response to much of the recent events, given that I cannot leave my apartment, was to doom-scroll Twitter. However, as many of my wise readers may have guessed, that wasn’t particularly efficacious nor healthy. Since then, I am glad to say that the Twitter app has been deleted from my phone. Instead, I am focusing on drinking oregano tea, learning about Indigenous science and German humor, redistributing funds with my local giving circle (hit me up if you are DC-based and want to get involved), and watching a lot of Jeopardy! in bed. As I am learning through this compelled 10 days of rest and relaxation, the current political moment is long. Rest up, folks.
Another day, another study telling us how to solve all of our problems! This time, a new report came out of the University of Sidney claiming that “19% of global food system greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are caused by transportation [which] is between 3.5 and 7.5 higher than previously estimated, and far exceeds the transport emissions of other commodities.”
This seemed to get some knickers in a twist, as the prevailing wisdom has been that eating local “is one of the most misguided pieces of advice” in terms of reducing carbon footprints. Should we then, as some food writers have suggested in a somewhat rash response to this new study, “look at the tag or the package of your food and opt for items that come from closer to home.”
The answer, as it is to many things, is probably “Eh, if you want to, I guess, but it certainly won’t solve the climate crisis.” As Jacob Aron has pointed out, there are some weird problems with how the results of this study get communicated in popular discourse. First of all, when looking at “food miles,” people normally are just talking about emissions to transport food. This study builds in emissions from transporting things like fertilizer, farm equipment, and pesticides— all great and important stuff, but that certainly won’t be solved by looking at packaging and opting for local food.
Even your local farmer’s market is not a panacea (sorry FreshFarm, I still love you!). Studies have shown that farms selling at markets and through CSAs use chemical fertilizers and pesticides at “comparable rates” to other farms— and, of course, these putatively local foods may still have high food miles given that these chemical inputs are also most likely shipped from afar. Moreover, as Michael LePage argues, “if you live in a nation with a cooler climate where tomatoes can be grown only using heated greenhouses, these local tomatoes will typically have a higher carbon footprint than those shipped in from a warmer country where no heating is needed.”
This isn’t to say that eating locally has no purpose, or that you should totally eschew it. Tamar Haspel puts it well: “Climate isn’t the only thing I think about when I choose dinner.” Local agriculture plays many important roles: it can alleviate the impacts of food apartheid, it can be a source of community empowerment and resistance, it can help create green spaces and keep areas cooler, it can “just be a place where a kid can meet a pig,” and the list goes on. But we can and should stop pretending that local inherently means more climate-friendly.
Instead, we should probably worry about what we eat and reduce animal products in our diets, and instead opt for things like grains, legumes, and tubers (please skip the Beyond Meat). And, we should think more holistically about our food systems, particularly our reliance on industrially produced inputs. For instance, right now Nepal (among many other countries) is on the “verge of a food crisis” due to the global shortage of fertilizer. To put it simply: I am begging food writers to think more broadly about what they eat and the larger food system rather than boil everything down to a simplistic and misguided understanding of “food miles”!
Other food-related pieces occupying my mind:
Speaking of easy + comfortable narratives pushed by mainstream food media, I loved this essay by Alicia Kennedy on the ways lifestyle journalism can change consumption.
This article by the inimitable Jenny Splitter on the promises and perils of “carbon farming” is a must-read.
This is a lovely piece on the many meanings of figs— and their relationship to acknowledging harm and envisioning the future of food.
I have not been drinking much at all in my quarantined state save for tea + OJ, but a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting Denmark for the first time with my dad. We went to a very hip restaurant in the former meat-packing district of Copenhagen (which I loved seeing as I’ve studied the way British industrialists outsourced meat processing to Denmark to provision the larger empire).
There, I had this rosé made from black currants. I had never had a currant wine before, but I loved it. It had a funky-rich-sweet flavor without being saccharine, and was definitely more interesting than your usual rosé. If anyone has any US-based currant wine recs, send them my way!
Here is a brief update on some of the food-related work I’ve been engaging in lately:
I am not doing much, but a few articles of mine came out recently (please read them!). For one, my Civil Eats article on hybrid grapes was published, and was republished by Eater, which was exciting for me but mostly for my brother who is an Eater-aficionado.
I had two JStor Daily pieces come out since we last spoke: one on hops and one on black-eyed peas.
In very exciting news, I have been selected as the second-ever winner of the Daphne Zepos Research Award, which provides funds for food industry professionals to learn more about cheese and dairy culturing around the world. I will be researching South Asian cheese traditions in Eastern India— you can find out more about my project here.
Thank you all for reading! Not much cooking to report this week, but I have been ideating about picking up this cookbook on Japanese pickling. Stay well, stay safe, and as my favorite podcast host says, stay alive another week.
Love, Julia