What did you learn about dietary choices from using the footprint calculator? Now imagine that you could translate what you learned into an effective societal policy on food- what would it be? And how would this policy effect the need to alleviate world hunger?
925 million people on earth do not have enough to eat according to the FAO [Food and Agricultural Organization]. That's almost 1 in 7 inhabitants of our planet!
Food & Hunger >
Is Local Food Better?
When you first ask yourself if locally grown food is better for the environment when it comes to carbon you will probably say yes. You probably think of how the transportation from farther away places will emission carbon. A study, however, done by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University proves that this is wrong. There studies show that only eleven percent of carbon emission in food production is caused by transportation. The production of the food has eighty-three percent of carbon emission. Your locally made food may have to make big changes to their environments to be able to grow your foods. This causes major carbon emission. While in the place that your food is originally grown will not have to make as big of changes, resulting in less carbon. In many circumstances, it is probably better to not buy locally grown food and have the food transported than to buy locally grown food if you are basing your diet off of carbon emission.
Sources:
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/bu … -diet.html