Study supports eat local initiatives

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A Queen’s University researcher has applied a study called Food Miles from the Waterloo region to Kingston , Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, Leeds and Landsdown region, concluding that potential emissions savings from increased local and regional food production would cut green house gas emissions significantly.

The study looked at the most commonly sourced food items, notably beef, finding that if all beef consumed in the Kingston region were produced in the region, it would have the same impact as cutting the number of cars in the region by 2,000.

“The fact that beef imports produce the highest emissions is important to note as it provides yet another reason to develop the local beef market and industry that already exists in the Kingston region,” says the report, which was written by Sunny Lam, a Master of Environmental Studies candidate at Queen’s.

Other products near the top of the list include lettuce and tomatoes, which could also be grown locally in hydroponic greenhouses to save energy use, “but only if the energy trade off of growing these two specific crops in an energy intensive greenhouse are less than importing them,” the report says.

Other popular items that would save energy if they were produced and eaten locally include potatoes, apples, onions, cheese, and carrots.

Recent initiatives such the Feast of fields events, (this year’s event will take place on Sunday at the Reinink farm at Yarker), a grown local logo to identify locally produced food, and the Saturday morning Frontenac Farmer’s Market in Verona are all designed to bring producers and consumers of food together to benefit the economy, help people to eat better, and cut down on the emissions caused by the bulk transport of food that could be efficiently produced within the region.