May 6, 2008
Farmers' Marketing
For those who crave local food, the long winter of parsnip and rutabaga soup is coming to an end. The surest sign of spring is the sight of farmers pitching their market tents for the year ahead. You know what that means: you'll be able to add fresh local asparagus and radishes to that soup any day now.
Toronto supports a handful of year-round markets including the old reliable St. Lawrence and a relative newcomer in Dufferin Grove Park. But there's no need to travel very far for the variety and freshness; Farmers' Markets Ontario lists a dozen more neighbourhood markets that come to life in Toronto each spring. One of the first underway this year is the Friends of Riverdale Farm Farmers' Market, held in Riverdale Park West at the corner of Winchester and Sumach Streets. The Riverdale market launches next Tuesday, May 13 from 3–7 p.m. and runs every Tuesday through the end of October. It's best known for its mix of organic, transitional, and wild produce as well as sheep's milk yogourt, free range elk for carnivores, and other unexpected treats.
The East York Farmers' Market at the East York Civic Centre rouses from its winter slumber a week later on Tuesday May 20 from 9 a.m.–2 p.m. It usually starts a little small in May but is in full swing by mid-June. Pick up jars of elderberry jam and icicle pickles while you're there, and bring a front-end loader for all the Honeycrisp apples you can carry in September.
By early June, the markets at Nathan Phillips Square (Wednesdays), Mel Lastman Square (Thursdays), Birch Cliff (Fridays), Withrow Park (Saturdays), Liberty Village (Sundays), and elsewhere in the city will also be serving up local produce to eager residents. Arrive early on market day for the best selection, chat with the vendors for recipe and cooking tips, and remember what it's like to eat fresh local food that hasn't spent a week or three on trucks and ships to get to you.
Photo by Jen Chan from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Please remember that if you are buying local produce that has been driven to Toronto in the back of a pickup truck or small vehicle by the farmers themselves, that it is in fact producing more CO2 than the produce shipped from other countries in big trucks or ships.
Remember, it isn't about the CO2 per vehicle being used - it is about the CO2 per kilo of cargo. A big cargo truck has the same economies of scale as mass transit - mass transit uses more fuel than a car, but the fuel use per passenger is less because it carries more passengers.
Also, remember that most fuel is used in the "last mile". Meaning, if you are driving downtown to St. Lawrence market from North York to get your locally grown produce, you have negated any environmental benefits of buying local (benefits that might be dubious anyway, if the local produce wasn't shipped by large truck).
It might be fun to buy local and talk to the farmers, etc... but if they don't take measures to reduce CO2 consumption (i.e. pooling produce shipments into large trucks vs. using small personal vans and pickup trucks), local produce is style over substance.
#1, what if you WALK to St. Lawrence Market, or bike, or take the TTC? Just wondering.
There's going to be a market in the Annex starting later this spring. So far, the plan is to have it open Wednesdays from 3 to 7 pm. It will be located in the Green P parking lot at Bloor and Borden/Lippincott. Maybe taking up the parking lot will encourage more people to walk/bike/TTC there rather than drive. I hope so.
#1, I would like to see and compare some of these exciting CO2/kg of cargo equations you speak of.
I mostly like Ontario produce beacause it is very tasty.
There's also the Saturday Farmer's Market at the Brickworks: http://evergreen.ca/rethinkspace/?p=148
It starts on 24 may weekend and goes to december. There's a free shuttle from Broadview subway station. If you love nature and great local food, it's well worth the trip!
I could only find the statistics in miles:
Railroad: 341 BTU per short ton mile
Waterbourne: 510 BTU per short ton mile
Heavy Trucks: 3,357 BTU per short ton mile
Air freight: 9,600 BTU per short ton mile
Pickup Truck: 20,000 BTU per short ton mile.
When your local farmer travels 1 mile in his pickup truck it is equivalent to traveling 58 miles by train, or 39 miles by ship, or 6 miles by semi, or 2 miles by airplane. This is assuming that your local farmer is packing 3000 pounds of produce in the back of his pickup truck. And that your local farmer is carrying cargo both ways. In reality, efficiency for the pickup truck is far far worse.
If your local farmer is only packing 2 or 3 crates of strawberries into the back of a pickup truck, and driving 150 km to Toronto, it produces more CO2 than it be would to fly those berries from California or Mexico.
Buying local *CAN* be very CO2 efficient when economies of scale are used (There are many Ontario products that use large-scale methods of distribution). If you are buying local produce at your local supermarket or corner store, where goods are shipped from distributors and moved using economies of scale, buying local really does make sense.
It is important that environmentalism is more than yuppie consumer greenwashing. If you want to argue that it is more fun to buy from farmers markets, or the product is fresher, or whatever, that is fine - we all deserve our little luxuries, and so I am definitely not trying to judge you. But lets remember that this stuff is an upper class luxury, and that you aren't necessarily being "green" or "responsible" by buying local. Un-sexy dirt cheap stuff like buying bulk dry goods (like lentils), and eating less/no meat and dairy, are far more green than buying fresh berries at the farmers market.
Sizzurp, you're missing a few variables: in addition to the long haul component you account for, the berries flown to Cali or Mexico would also be driven from the field to the distribution centre, to the airport and then from the destination airport, to the distribution centre and lastly, the "last mile" to the store. Add this all up and you're way better off with a berry from Niagara, methinks.
Yeah, Sizzurup. I kinda think that your math is a bit suspect, and more than that I find it pretty offensive that you seem to think that going to farmers markets is akin to something that would appear on "Stuff White People Like" and that we should therefore not do it.
Poor people have been going to farmers markets for thousands of years. So have rich people (or at least their servants).
Actually, before us rich whities invented grocery stores it was literally the only way to buy food.
In many countries (whether they are rich and white like France, or poor and black like most of Africa) it still is the only way to buy food for the very simple reason that buying foods in season is cheaper, and tastier.
More than that, it brings us all a step closer to seeing where our food comes from, and getting us to actually think about the people who worked hard to produce it - and I just can't quite see that as a bad thing from an environmental, or a cultural standpoint.
I mean really, I think the last thing we should be doing right now is discouraging people from going to farmers markets.
I find it interesting that so many of those commenting are willing to dismiss the point raised by the first out of hand. There may be problems with the math but the central point is a good one: that one shouldn't assume that eating something locally grown is the better option from a green perspective. I found this G&M article on the same point to be interesting and direct your attention there:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080506.wreynolds0507/BNStory/robColumnsBlogs
Has eating locally become so central to the hipster worldview that it cannot be evaluated on a quantitative basis? It seems so from (8)'s conclusion that we should be encouraging farmers' markets without any evaluation of the costs and benefits. Leaving aside the esoteric justications (connecting us with the source of our food/knowing where our food comes from - what is this, a grade 4 trip to the farm?) and the dubious economic justification (I'm sure you wouldn't be urging us to "support local industry" if there was a more productive, less CO2 intensive alternative elsewhere in any other industry), it really comes down to the carbon balance, and I don't think this issue is settled.
On the other hand, you may support local markets because the berries taste better. That is totally justifiable, but not a matter of environmental or "cultural" policy, and shouldn't be encouraged as such.
The Globe and Mail would have a point, if our lives weren't so sedentary in North America that we have to waste our time running on treadmills to burn the energy we consume, or at very least packing it into our insides. If we walked to the grocery store instead of going to the gym, I'm pretty sure it would balance out.
And the thing about the math I have a problem with is that the farther away your food is from you the harder it is to figure out just how much carbon was expended creating it - how am I to know that the organic food I bought from China (or wherever) didn't consume massive amounts of energy being transported to the jet plane/ship? There's pretty much no way - I'd be reliant on dozens of middle men. And the fact that there's dozens of middle men doesn't exactly reassure me. But I can ask my local farmer at the market exactly how my apples got there.
And it's incredibly likely that the food from China DID consume massive amounts of energy before getting packed onto a plane or freighter. If I go to a local market I'm cutting out AT LEAST that last chunk of travel.
The home grown apple looks something like this:
farm>market>home
the Chinese apple looks something like this:
farm>grading center>shipping centre>customs>shipping>customs>shipping>distribution centre>shipping>grocery store>home
The equation isn't counting the total cost of importing something. Only the last leg.
Oh, and for the record, I go to farmers markets on occasion because it tastes better.
I get my my locally grown, seasonal, organic vegetables from my food box - which we pick up from a distribution center. Doesn't get more low-carbon than that.
Nor does growing your own food - which i am also doing.
Sighing, giving up and eating lentils for the rest of your life (although I do love a good lentil) is defeatist and silly when there are other options out there.