Hmm interesting, thanks. That is all GHG emissions though. I wonder if there are numbers around buying produce or meat at the store, how much of the GHG emissions tied to that product are agricultural vs the packaging, transportation, etc.
In other words, how big of a difference does 'buying local' have when buying food? Just wondering aloud, not necessarily asking anyone in particular.
I use to have the sources somewhere but I'm not finding them at the moment. So let's just do this as a mind exercise.
Take into consideration that while ships are tremendously more efficient, they travel significantly more miles. When comparing a single shipping container, a cargo ship burns 0.3 gallons of bunker fuel per hour and a semi truck burns 10 gallons of diesel. If you add distance into the calculation, a cargo ship from Brazil to NYC takes 122 gallons of bunker fuel while something produced locally takes 1/12 of that in diesel. Further more, bunker fuel exceptionally worse than diesel when comparing emissions.
This is just for the transport side of things too. The electricity production in many other countries produce an increased amount of green house gasses compared to the United States.