The killer Freakonomics blog at the NYT profiled the economics of growing your own food a few days ago. Blogger Stephen Dubner comes down against the locavore dream of backyard farms (largely, it seems, due to his own ill-fated experiment making sherbet), but his evidence is largely anecdotal. Until, that is, he quotes a study recently published in Environmental Science and Technology that researched the impact of food production and transportation.
Turns out that the production side of industrial farming consumes the lion's share the environmental impact, 83 percent by their figuring. Transportation only contributes 11 percent to the total environmental bill. And, since red meat production is by far the most climatically damaging, the study's authors conclude:
"Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food."
Huh. I still that growing your own can have a benefit, but maybe it's more psychological than economic. Unless, of course, your blood pressure goes up every time you find rat bites in your heirloom tomatoes.
This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2008.