Sustainable Living: Environmental benefits of eating local

What is the single most important thing that one person can do to curb global warming?

Some people might say permanently parking your car. That would stop about a fifth of America’s greenhouse gas emissions if we all did that. However, agriculture produces more greenhouse gas emissions than our automobiles. The single most important change we can make is to eat locally. That means eating in season, what is grown and produced locally, including meats and grains.


Author Michael Pollan states that “one third of (greenhouse gas emissions) can be attributed to the saw and the plow.” We are literally eating our way through the earth’s resources, destroying the environment and rapidly warming the planet. Much of the rainforest today has been cleared to raise cows for export to feed fast-food chains’ hunger for cheaper hamburger meat. In reality, the savings is only about a nickel per hamburger, but the cost to the environment is devastatingly high. A quarter of the greenhouse gas emissions dumped into our atmosphere every day around the world are from the burning of our forests. Add to that the emissions created by feedlots, large-scale dairies and agro-industry, plus the loss of our topsoil and pollution of our freshwater, and we have a recipe for environmental catastrophe.

Times Herald-Record (Middletown, NY)