Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States

Weber, Christopher L.; Matthews, H. Scott

doi:10.1021/es702969f

Cited by 861 publications

(604 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The consumption of local food in an average American household yields a maximum reduction of 4-5% of the total greenhouse gas emissions related to food consumption. For fruits and vegetables this share is 11%, because the production phase is less emission intensive (Weber and Matthews 2008). For the UK, a recent life-cycle analysis of community agriculture on vacant land reported a reduction of only 0.4% of the total food-related emissions (Kulak et al 2013).…”

Section: Global Climate Regulating Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential ecosystem services of urban agriculture: a review

Aerts

Dewaelheyns

Achten

2016

Preprint

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Urban agriculture (UA) is increasingly proposed as an environmentally friendly answer to global challenges including urbanization, public health, food security and climate change. We provide an overview of present evidence of ecosystem services delivered by UA that could potentially increase the sustainability of the urban ecosystem, including the often claimed reduced greenhouse gas emissions. There is general agreement that UA is important for local food production, especially in the south; that UA has a role in regulating green and blue water flows, organic waste flows and pollination; and that UA has important socio-cultural values, including an improved quality of city life and increased local community capacity. There is some evidence that UA may also improve human health because of dietary changes in certain social classes, but these are potentially confounded by environmental pollution in the city. Quantitative evidence is very limited for all ecosystem services, but the available data nevertheless suggests that the overall food productivity and the total reductions in greenhouse gas emission are low at global or city-wide scale despite the fact that UA has potential strong effects on food security at the local scale. The current eagerness of industrialized cities to integrate UA into their food policies as an approach to become "climate neutral" or to rely on ecosystem services to become more resilient calls for life cycle assessment studies that accurately quantify emission reductions and other urban ecosystem services of urban agriculture.

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Section: Global Climate Regulating Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential ecosystem services of urban agriculture: a review

Aerts

Dewaelheyns

Achten

2016

Preprint

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“…Weber & Matthews (2008) found red meat is on average three times more carbon intense than fish and poultry. For this reason, the food literature on climate change focuses on cows and feedstock such as soy.…”

Section: Food Footprintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A robust meta-study by Weber & Matthews (2008) found that most food-related carbon emissions occur during production (83%). Garnett (2009) argues that LCAs are insufficient for food because they fail to capture the more complex land-use interactions that occur worldwide, particularly with livestock food consumption, deforestation, and feeder crops.…”

Section: Food Footprintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Weber & Matthews (2008) found that only 4% of the total carbon footprint of food, on average, is due to transportation from producer to retailer. In fact, the total transportation supply chain is about four times the distance traveled from farm to store.…”

Section: Food Footprintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are many co-benefits for locally grown food, but climate change is not chief among them. To compare local production with red meat consumption, if the average American switched just 10 to 20% of their diet away from red meat and dairy they would have the equivalent GHG savings of growing all of their food in their own back yard (Weber & Matthews, 2008).…”

Section: Food Footprintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Carbon Sponsoring: A New Idea in Personal Carbon Trading, Direct Carbon Offset Pledges for Travel

Bigazzi¹

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Public and political consensus expresses the need for broad action to mitigate climate change. To this end, different forms of carbon trading exist to initiate carbon reduction projects. This thesis proposes the idea of carbon sponsoring, a new tool for personal carbon trading. Unlike carbon offsets, the main option for individuals wishing to mitigate their carbon footprint, carbon sponsoring is a purely social instrument involving carbon-reducing pledges. Carbon sponsoring is intended for individuals who seek immediate, direct carbon offsets for their personal emissions. It is not meant as a broad tool correcting the various deficiencies of the carbon trading markets, but a specialized mechanism with a small role in the struggle against climate change.As a demonstration project, an online implementation for carbon sponsoring of personal travel was crafted with the following objectives:1. Increase awareness of size of carbon footprint from personal travel and activities 2. Increase awareness of personal carbon reduction strategies 3. Facilitate personal carbon reductions 4. Familiarize users with carbon trading A three-week initial study period of the new tool showed good results, with participants reporting increased awareness of person carbon footprints, carbon reduction strategies, and carbon trading. While the overall results were positive, the website created for this study has some deficiencies related to the visual design and ease of navigation.These shortcomings are not central to the idea of carbon sponsoring, and skilled web designers can rectify them as a next step.Carbon sponsoring sustains some of the problems of carbon offsetting, including insufficient quality control and lack of third-party verification of carbon reductions.Carbon sponsoring also offers new benefits and improvements in the areas of equity, user costs and co-benefits, and carbon reduction time accounting. Carbon sponsoring also accesses personal emissions reductions in a way that indirect, upstream methods cannot.This benefit, especially, secures carbon sponsoring a convincing role in broad mitigation efforts to address climate change. Carbon sponsoring might only lead to a small volume of carbon reductions with respect to the entirety of anthropogenic emissions, but it can provide important assistance in efforts to promote public awareness of carbon footprints, carbon reduction strategies, carbon budgeting, and carbon trading.

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Biofuel as an Integrated Farm Drainage Management crop: A bioeconomic analysis

Levers

Schwabe

2017

Water Resources Research

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Irrigated agricultural lands in arid regions often suffer from soil salinization and lack of drainage, which affect environmental quality and productivity. Integrated Farm Drainage Management (IFDM) systems, where drainage water generated from higher‐valued crops grown on high quality soils are used to irrigate salt‐tolerant crops grown on marginal soils, is one possible strategy for managing salinity and drainage problems. If the IFDM crop were a biofuel crop, both environmental and private benefits may be generated; however, little is known about this possibility. As such, we develop a bioeconomic programming model of irrigated agricultural production to examine the role salt‐tolerant biofuel crops might play within an IFDM system. Our results, generated by optimizing profits over land, water, and crop choice decisions subject to resource constraints, suggest that based on the private profits alone, biofuel crops can be a competitive alternative to the common practices of land retirement and nonbiofuel crop production under both low to high drainage water salinity. Yet IFDM biofuel crop production generates 30–35% fewer GHG emissions than the other strategies. The private market competitiveness coupled with the public good benefits may justify policy changes encouraging the growth of IFDM biofuel crops in arid agricultural areas globally.

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Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States

Cited by 861 publications

References 23 publications

Potential ecosystem services of urban agriculture: a review

Potential ecosystem services of urban agriculture: a review

Carbon Sponsoring: A New Idea in Personal Carbon Trading, Direct Carbon Offset Pledges for Travel

Biofuel as an Integrated Farm Drainage Management crop: A bioeconomic analysis

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