Lesson Six: Sustainable Eating
How those “local tomatoes” aren’t actually better for our environment
Before we begin, I’d just like to say that climate change research is weird and convoluted.
For the longest time I had it in my head local > everything else because that’s all I heard from everyone … until I made that comment to my thesis advisor last year (ha!) where he proceeded to inform me how wrong I was. This is what I learned
🤯<- this will be your mind shortly.
For starters, THIS IS ALL CANADA’S FAULT.
In cooler climates (like Canada), local weather is not conducive to growing a majority of fruits and vegetables we often find in the grocery store year-round. Our two options are:
Grow them in greenhouses
Have them shipped to us
You’ve probably heard about how having food shipped from thousands of miles away is bad for the environment. And you’re 100% right. It is definitely taxing when you think of the fuel and refrigeration it takes.
Tomatoes are the classic example. If we get 🍅shipped, they come from:
Southwestern Ontario has the largest concentration of greenhouse tomato operations in North America - predominantly in:
A little quiz for you. Out of all of the major inputs that go into greenhouse farming:
Growing 1,000 kg of tomatoes = 3093 kg CO2 eq. When you break it down…
In 2018, one of the farms in Leamington produced 51,255,937 kg of food. This is equivalent to 158.5 million kg CO2 eq. In the case you aren’t a climate scientist, that would be the same as driving around the world 15,759 times. 🤯Right?!
A bit of good news, Ontarians are taking action 💪. Tomato plants are pairing together with other industrial factories and using their excess heat + CO2 to grow their produce! That just makes me feel good from my head to-ma-toes 😉🍅.
What you can do:
Be conscious of what you’re eating from where
If you can, eat more “in-season” items. A great list can be found here.
As always, if you have any questions, let me know! I always love hearing from you 💚! Leave me a question or comment below.
