The cost of eating green

Local is the new organic -- and a great way to cut your carbon footprint. But unless you get creative, you'll end up paying more.
Ann Monroe, MSN Money (excerpted)

There are a lot of areas where saving the earth also saves you money. But when it comes to your eating habits -- one of the most important tools you have for slowing global warming -- there's no question that it's going to cost you.

With food, what's good for your pocketbook is bad for the earth. Really bad.

Why? Because the huge companies that grow, process and ship most of the food that most of us eat don't have to pay what their business operations actually cost. They don't have to pay to clean up the nitrogen that their chemical fertilizers pour into our waterways, or for the carbon dioxide that's spewed out when our food is shipped thousands of miles.

Just think about this: For every mile traveled by a huge tractor-trailer to haul our food, according to a University of Iowa study, 3.74 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted. So shipping, say, one load of strawberries from California to New York puts more than 11,000 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- more than 4 ounces of carbon dioxide for each 12-ounce box of strawberries. Making matters worse, perishable foods are increasingly being flown long distances in refrigerated cargo planes.

Those transportation costs are tax-deductible for the big food corporations, meaning that taxpayers get the bill. So as we look harder at how we're contributing to global warming, these food miles are surfacing as one of the big problems.

It's a problem you can't necessarily solve by eating organic. Growing food organically does cut down on pollution, including the pollution caused by the manufacture of all those chemical fertilizers. But as its popularity grows, organic food is increasingly moving into the commercial food distribution system, which means it's shipped as far as any other kind of food. But you can eat in a way that cuts almost all of those food miles. The secret? Eat locally. It's an idea that's being embraced more widely by chefs, writers and a growing number of ordinary folks. Already on the bandwagon: Alice Waters of famed Berkeley, Calif., restaurant Chez Panisse and authors Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben and Barbara Kingsolver.

There's no denying that eating locally can cost more, depending on the season. In early June, for instance, local strawberries were $8 a quart at my local farmers market, while a local Pathmark supermarket was selling two quarts (from California, about 3,000 miles away) for $10. On the other hand, in November, apples were going for $1 to $1.50 a pound at the farmers market -- about the same price as Pathmark's. And the farmers market apples were a lot fresher. Why are many local foods so much more expensive? The way our economy is structured, the cheapest way to produce food is to grow it on huge farms, process it in huge plants and then ship it around the world. In fact, our food system is so transport-oriented that food isn't sold locally even when it is grown locally.

An example: Although New York state grows 10 times as many apples as its residents consume, 75% of the apples sold in New York come from the West Coast or overseas (if the U.S. were to adopt a carbon tax, that economic equation would change fast). That means you can't eat local from your local supermarket or your local Wal-Mart or even, for many products, your local Whole Foods grocery.

But here's the good news: Buying local food is getting easier. It doesn't have to cost a ton. When you buy local, you can be pretty certain the food you're eating has been treated better than traditionally grown food. And buying it is a whole lot more fun than a trip to the supermarket.
Where do you find local food?

Start with the fastest-growing segment of the food system: farmers markets, whose numbers more than doubled between 1994 and 2004.

If you haven't been to a farmers market lately, you might be surprised at what you can buy: fruits and vegetables, sure, but also flowers and plants; pastured chicken and eggs; meat, milk and cheese from grass-fed animals; and breads and pastries made with non-GMO flour. (GMO is short for genetically modified organism, a bête noire of green-thinking foodies.) Look it up: What does 'free-range' really mean?
When you're buying from a farmer’s market, shopping can shift from being a chore to being a source not just of delicious, fresh-off-the-farm food, but also of entertainment, information and satisfaction.

Most of us can't buy all of our food locally, though some of us, like the locavores (www.locavores.com) and Barbara Kingsolver, have tried, at least for short periods. We probably shouldn't try -- because a lot of very poor people around the world rely on our appetites for treats such as coffee, chocolate and bananas. When you buy goodies like that from organic and fair-trade growers, you know they're raising their crops sustainably and earning a fair return. That does a lot to make up for all those food miles.
Eating locally does take some getting used to. For one thing, it means eating seasonally: asparagus in spring, tomatoes in high summer, and lots and lots of broccoli and cabbage in the wintertime. But honestly, have you ever bought a tomato in January that didn't taste like plastic?