Congratulations to the New Zealand lamb-export industry for getting a gullible The New York Times to publish an op-ed recycling its claim that its product is better for the global environment than locally produced lamb. The argument, however, is more than a little bit wooly. The industry-sponsored study cited turns out to be dressing up an environmentally dreadful product in benign sheep’s clothing.

Here’s what the James McWilliams wrote on August 6: “Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand…recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption….[T]hey found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard.”

Who were these esteemed researchers? One, Caroline Saunders, heads The Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit at Lincoln University. Assisting her was Andrew Barber, an Agriculture Engineering Consultant with a private consulting firm called The AgriBusiness Group. I don’t begrudge New Zealand’s desire to protect its export industries, but these researchers are hardly agenda-free.

The study compared the typical industrially grown sheep in the two countries, and showed that New Zealand’s agribusiness players are a bit better in their ecological practices than their British counterparts. It’s a little like saying that a new SUV contributes less to global warming than an old gas-guzzling Cadillac.

The explanation of most of the difference in the two country’s carbon emissions turns out to be coal. Typical British farmers use more electricity – both directly and indirectly for the processing of its fertilizers, feeds, and additives – and are thereby saddled with the emissions from lots of dirty coal plants. New Zealand has lots of hydroelectric dams. So those poor bionic sheep in the United Kingdom inherit a huge carbon price tag. This also means that as the British move toward renewable energy sources, as they plan to do, the New Zealand carbon advantage will vanish.
What the New Zealand study really stands for is how awful industrial agriculture is for the environment in both countries. James McWilliams says that “poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed.” Force? The use of industrially produced feeds, chemicals, and electricity is a choice. And, again, the movement toward organic and natural alternatives can erase New Zealand’s carbon advantage.

Then there’s a little accounting problem. Buried in page 19 of Dr. Saunders’ report is the qualifier that “the transport of the finished product within New Zealand, the UK and any other country involved is not included….” This covers up one of the big disadvantages of New Zealand lamb, since it has to be trucked twice, once from the farm to a New Zealand port, and then again from a British port to the supermarket. On pages 43-44 we learn, moreover, that trucking transport emits four times more carbon per ton than the sea transport assumed by the researchers. Correction of this mistake would eliminate about a quarter of the Kiwi advantage. (Assuming air transport, as is necessary for fresh food, also would have totaly undermined the study’s conclusion.)

More importantly, what has any of this to do with buying from, in McWilliams’ words, “a producer in the backyard?” This study did not compare a locally and organically grown lamb in, say, Sheffield, with an exported Kiwi lamb – though that’s what the study’s authors and McWilliams suggest.

Real localization would eliminate most of the carbon emitted by product transportation – and erases more than half the carbon advantage claimed by New Zealand’s exporters.

Transportation, moreover, is only small piece of the waste inherent in a conventional nonlocal food system. Analysis of a typical food dollar spent in the United States by Stewart Smith, former Secretary of Agriculture in Maine, suggests that 73 cents go to distribution, 20 cents for inputs, and 7 cents to the farmer. Only a small part of distribution is transportation. Most of it is refrigeration, packaging, wholesalers, advertisers, and so forth.
In other words, the Lincoln University team in New Zealand analyzed only about a third of industrial agriculture system, and ignored the two thirds of the system that can be substantially cut down through localization.
The Saunders’ study is a nice promo for the New Zealand lamb industry, but it’s a lousy piece of analysis. It’s an embarrassment that the New York Times so sheepishly republished this disinformation about local food systems.
Real localization means avoiding environmentally unsound inputs of outside fertilizer, feed, and additives. It means pruning away the vast economic waste associated with ad agencies and middle people. It means avoiding trucking food around either nationally or internationally. Account for these items comprehensively and fairly, and local food wins out environmentally over global food almost every time.



Michael H. Shuman (shuman@igc.org ) is Vice President for Enterprise Development at the Training & Development Corporation of Bucksport, Maine. His most recent book is The Small-Mart Revolution: How Local Businesses Are Beating the Global Competition (Berrett-Koehler, 2006).