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Sorry, should have included the link and explanation: basically growing food is energy intensive, but transporting food by ship is actually very efficient.

This results in a paradox where locally grown food, if it needs additional lights, spraying, ploughing, etc. is worse for the environment than food grown in perfect climage and transported to you.

https://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-loca...



Some sources e.g. http://www.fao.org/world-banana-forum/projects/good-practice... assert that ~2/3 of banana GHG footprint is caused by transportation and storage, including things like refrigeration on ship.

It's probably still more efficient (both money-wise and GHG-wise) than growing bananas locally in UK; now that would need a lot of extra energy; but on the other hand it would be more efficient to eat food that normally grows locally in your climate instead of bananas.


Ofcourse that's true, but no-one is (or at least should be) eating multiple kilos of bananas, coffee and chocolate. They are not a staple food like meat and potatoes.

All I am trying to say is that in the total carbon footprint of a person, they account for a miniscule part of the whole, and that things like a well insulated house, transport, etc. will be vastly more important




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