Homegrown food creates 5x CO2 than conventional food

Here is one without a wall

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/22/carbon-footprint-homegrown-food-allotment-increase/

It’s complete bs, as a study. I’ve read the details. Don’t have time to explain. But I will later

Guys guys stop the shit. Growing your own food is killing the environment.

The road to climate hell is paved with worm shit and growing your own food.

Yep - I'd say 90% of the time here I'm antagonistic...making a point, but not necessarily in a nice way...

but this thread deserves attn...

there are a number of issues that are important: food supply chain (reliability), nutritional value of the produce, taste, environmental impact, cost to produce 

- most food - produce -  sold in the US in grocery stores is grown out of the country...for example, our tomatoes here in RI at the supermarket come almost exclusively from mexico...these are bred to be picked green, turn red during a long transport, with a durable skin for stacking, and a long shelf life....so the genetics of the seed play a very important role here....there is a good documentary on this called seeds for profit, featuring the israeli breeder who invested the long transport tomato....its called seeds for profit...on youtube
- obviously, in addition to getting something that has no taste and no nutritional value, there is transportation impact studies that must be done to assess the whole supply chain, to go from where it is grown to get to the consumer
- these tomatoes - or any tomato - when picked green have little to no nutritional value. Tomatoes turn red not because of the sun, because of the ethylene gas they emit. a Tomato that ripens on the vine, goes thru a process of converting starches to sugars...and thats where the nutrition comes from...as well as the good taste. One can buy a brix tester on ebay for under 30 dollars, or a relly good one for under 100, and test total dissolved solids of any vegetable or fruit. These dissolved solids relate directly to nutrition, and coincidentally taste
- conservation: In high-tech greenhouses, there are tremendous sustainable features...looking at a tomato, to produce 1kg of fruit takes 9 liters of water. In open field agriculture you need about 300 liters of water per kg fruit produced. Also, all water for growing comes from rainwater captured on the roof. The nutrients required are a fraction of whats required in open field as in hyrdoponics it goes right to the roots and is recaptured, depletion scanned and replenished. In open field ag, the fertlizer used goes through an oxidation process and produces CO2 and N2O...the N2O has 300x the negative effect of CO2 (in greenhouse gases)
- Risk: what does happen in centralized food supply is growers try to get a one or maybe two varieties (cultivars) per crop. The average person has no idea how risky this is...each year seed breeders race to outpace mother nature, and new diseases...with a decentralized food supply, and locally grown crops, there is far far far less risk if any one variety gets wiped out.
- Most seed production is done France and Idaho. However, this is deceiving as the large monocrops like corn and soy and beans make up such large volume. If you are talking about tomatoes etc - crops you thing about when talking vegetables, a great deal, most, is done in china...most of the land we used in the states to use for seed production in Oregon or AZ, has been purchased by the saudis and chinese and is used to grow alfalfa...
- GMO- GMO in an of itself is not bad..its is basically taking something that would never occur in nature, like resistance to round up, and splicing in the dna sequence into a target....where it becomes "bad" is that this round up is now sprayed all over the crop...it goes into the ground and kills everything....so the plants are now dependent on fertilizer (supplied by the same companies that produce the weed killer), and are not drought resistant, and require far more water. It's a terrible farming practice. Much of our water supply gets ruined, algae blooms etc due to fertilizer runoff....It's a terrible, unsustainable practice.

I think an article like this take a very narrow, skewed, biased look...at its core food must be nutritious for our health. That must be considered in an overall analysis of the best way to manage our food supply. What good is growing cheaply if the food has no nutritional value, or far away if you cant get it. As should the environmental impact (energy, transport, water, land use) as well as supply chain/risk (during covid our produce shelves were mostly spotty and empty for a couple years) 

The Dutch have a great food model. During WWII and after they went thru the Dutch famine and as a country decided we cant let that happen again...so they marched towards food independence, food with good nutritional value. Look up dutch greenhouses and its amazing what they have done for food for their country and countries close to them.

Overall, I believe its dangerous as a society to become dependent on centralized supply...not to mention the food tastes bad and has little to no nutritional value.

Well, good news then. The absolute latest technology in farming is multi-crops, where the crops are diversified and rotated so the soil is not depleted, and the crops are not tasteless.

Unfortunately, Federal subsidies encourage farmers NOT to use this strategy. It basically pays them to grow one crop, all the time. And those same subsidies have resulted in family farms going away, and corporate owned farms dominating.

If we truly want a food supply that both supports family farmers AND tastes good/is nutritious, then we must change the model currently dominating existing farms in the US.

I've yet to see many politicians (on either side) advocate for this, and the reason is corporate lobbying.

Now as a sidenote, the one place that has the MOST diversity in farming is still California. We get fresh fruits and vegetables, year-round, often from farms that are located within 10-20 miles of metropolitan centers. In the suburban area where I live, I have literally dozens of family farms that will deliver fresh produce directly to my home. Same was true when I lived in Los Angeles (also had fresh milk and butter delivered).

Just saying we CAN do things right in the US, if we change our model.

Freon

What conclusions? The ones you made up? Lol.

"I ONLY COMMENTED ON ALL THE CONCLUSIONS YOU CAME TO!"

Hahahahahah

That's why I only eat store-bought food (wink,wink), and if it's cooked by others, all the better. Who knew that you could be an ecologist, by being lazy?

Didn't you say that you had plenty of room for all these parties you're throwing? 

This is still a silly question that does not warrant an answer.

Or rather, you keep asking the wrong question.

Freon