BuzzFeed News manages to make two mistakes here about food and the environment.
One is the idea that if we each eat one more heritage tomato, then the world will be saved. No, it’s not going to work out like that. Individual actions make a difference at the margin, true, but it is at the margin only. Changing how we eat as individuals makes very little difference to the world as a whole – unless we’re trying to count the smug points we gain by doing so.
So this isn’t all that useful as a headline nor even an idea: “How To Choose Climate-Friendly Foods If You Care About The Environment.”
What is of far greater concern is the repetition of untruths about food and the environment. This. for example, simply is not true:
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“Eat local. Food from farmers markets and local growers will likely contain fewer pesticides, and has traveled a shorter distance before you buy it. All of this lowers an item’s carbon load.”
There’s nothing at all that says that local food will be grown in some more organic manner, with fewer pesticides. It’s also true that the necessarily greater use of land that organic farming requires could increase carbon emissions – and certainly increases land use.
