could it be possible to cut emissions by farming closer to supermarkets?

Answer 1

And can we grow bananas outside Asda?

What about when our crop season is over?

Answer 2

Supermarkets are located near where people live. Farms typically take up a lot of land. Creating farms closer to supermarkets would take up land where people could otherwise live, adversely affecting the supermarkets' customer demographics and causing more emissions from people having to drive farther not only to go to the supermarket, but likely also farther to go to work, school, etc. In essence, your question is one of whether the emissions decrease of a few trucks a few times a week outweighs the emissions increases of hundreds, if not thousands, of cars daily and perhaps even several times daily.

Moreover, supermarkets typically receive goods from their own distribution centers, not from farms, so farming closer to supermarkets could quite possibly increase the total distance from the farms to the distribution centers to the supermarkets.

So, while it might be possible to cut emissions by farming closer to supermarkets in some situations, such a non-economic forced relocation would likely increase emissions.

Answer 3

Here's a radical idea. We have small stores, as part of each community, so shoppers can visit on foot every day to buy fresh produce. The farmers grow a mixture of foods, and take these to the local markets on a regular basis.

The downside to this would be that we would only be able to have locally grown fruit, vegetables, cereals, meats, etc.

This would put us back in tune with nature, and cut down on the obesity crisis that's looming. The current level of road and rail journeys would be drastically reduced too, which would reduce the burning of oil fuels, along with the unpleasant emissions.

I have heard of a place where this seemed to work really well, and it was in this area. It was a place called The Past.

Answer 4

It's a good idea, however...
That would only take care of the produce at the supermarket. There are thousands of other non produce items

People should make a conscious effort to buy products that are made locally. There are less emissions involved when shipping since they don't have to go as far. Also, you are then giving your money to the local economy.

Answer 5

No, because they'd still transport it to the distribution center at the other end of the country and back again.

Yes you can get local milk in some supermarkets now, but that's a miniscule fraction of thier turnover that serves largely to jump on the 'local' bandwagon that is actually relevant to farm shops, community and all the thing supermarkets aren't.

The food mile issue is down to the consumer, purchase by purchase.

Answer 6

Most of the food in supermarkets is processed and packaged, so if the processing facilities can be located between the farms and the supermarkets, then it would make sense to locate them in the same area.

Answer 7

70% of our air pollution is made by our electric power plants!
If you really want to cut emissions we needs clean electric power plants more than all the other stuff combined.

Go to www.uspto.gov and enter patent number 5,430,333.

There you will see pollution free electric power able to be built to be more than 1000 times that of our largest Nuclear Reactor!

Plant Vogtle, our last Nuclear Reactor makes only 930 megawatts.

The first generation “baby” power plants from this new technology makes 1000 megawatts.

Vogtle cost $10 billion, 30 years ago.

These new power plants cost $2.5 billion in today’s money.

Vogtle is about to be retired, as are all our other Nuclear plants.

All the fueled power plants only have about a 30 life span.

The power plant design you will see at patent office site live well over 100 years.

They burn NO fuel what so ever!

It costs more to demolish a Nuclear plant than to build one new!

The spent Nuclear fuel has a 25,000 year storage problem with no solution yet, and a tremendous cost that defies accurate estimation due to the very long time frame.

Nuclear power has been estimated to cost more $50.00 per kilowatt hour when the demolition and storage costs are applied.

Guess who gets to foot that bill, the tax payer!

Being fuel-less the design you see at the patent office has a cost of about 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

Coal fired power plants make 8 lbs of air pollution to run 100 watt light bulb for an hour.

There are NO cost estimations for the clean up of all that pollution.

We keep seeing in the news about coal miners dieing in cave-ins.

With the high cost of electric power being hidden for so long by our politicians using their abysmally poor judgment to allow this to happen in the first place. Then compounding the problem with their constant lying about it to all of us, and the problem now coming to light despite their best efforts to lie and hide it. We are now stuck with the costs of their abysmally poor judgment after their being “paid” by big power to lie to us about the scope of this problem for decades.

Call all your elected official state, local, and federal. Tell them you want the pollution free electric power you saw at the patent office web site! Tell them to get off their assets and get moving on making pollution free and cheaper electric power happen ASAP!

Or swallow their lies so more until our nation is so polluted our children die younger than ever before. Cancer is running rampant everywhere, it comes from all the pollution our elected officials are allowing to be spewed into “our” environment every day. It time to put pollution into it’s proper place, “THE PAST”!

We now have the technology, we can build it, it’s 100% clean, and the electric power is cheaper than ANY fueled power plant.

Answer 8

Short answer...no. You are obviously not involved in the agriculture sector, and do not understand it, just how many thousands of MILES of farmland it takes to grow our food.

I'm in Idaho, right in the very heart of potato country. 70% of the potatoes eaten in the U.S. are grown right here in my county. That's county, not state.

Along with the baking potatoes you probably see in the grocery store, we grow all of the potatoes for McDonald's french fries. That's a who lot of potatoes.

The amount of wheat that would need to be grown just to produce the bread for a stores bread would be stagering.

Besides, even if the farm is right next to the grocery store, who is going to process the food? The produce isle is relatively a small section of the store.

Most people are buying convience foods. That has to be processed at a plant somewhere.

Again, back to potatoes. The potatoes are harvested here, then sacked for the ones going to stores, and trasported to the stores. Others are sent to factories, cut up, made into fries, frozen and transported everywhere. Or the potatoes cut up for canned soups, or freeze dried meals. Potato flakes, for instant mashed potatoes. Heck, we even make the snow Hollywood uses.

Then there is the other problem...no all plants grow in all areas. This is high mountain desert. 4700 + feet high. Bet you didn't know that potatoes grow best in the desert, did you? They need a long hot day, but the plants grow best in areas that become cool at night....that's right here in the mountains, in the desert.

I enjoy eating corn, but our growing season is a scant 90 days here. Corn takes 120 days to mature. Plants are grown best in the climates the suit them best. Like citrus trees (oranges, lemmons, grapefruit) are grown in California, and Florida. They couldn't grow at all here.

Not to mention the fact that Americans have become very use to eating foods out of season. They want to go to the grocery store, and buy lettuce and tomatoes in January, the dead of winter. Those foods are often coming from other countries, like Mexico, or Brazil.

What would really cut emissions is if people learned to truely cook from scratch, and purchased their food in bulk.

Example...we do food storage (over a years worth) and I cook from scratch. That means my wheat comes in 50-100 pound sacks, and I grind it into flour myself, and bake bread myself. So no trucks deliver bread to the stores for me, no flour to the bakeries for me. I also produce no plastic bread bags as waste.

If everyone learned to bake their own bread truely from scratch, the cut in emissions would be huge.

Because we buy in bulk, and stock food, we only shop once, or twice a year. How many times a week do you go to the gorcery store?

I have friends who are teachers. They do not stock their food for a year at a time. They only go to the grocery store 12 times a year though. They get paid once a month. So once a month, they buy ALL the groceries they need for the entire month.

People need to stop with the convience foods, and learn to cook, and to buy food wisely. THAT would cut down on emissions.

~Garnet
Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 9

yes, remove the residents housing and replace them by fields or build a supermarket in the middle of nowhere

Answer 10

Absolutely.

Many environmentalists and others try to use as much locally grown food as possible.

It's a winner in many ways, support your community, less transportation, generally fresher products.

You don't have to be compulsive about it. Obviously it works better for some things than others.

Answer 11

Of course
Thats why food miles are so important.
Of course, there are going to be somethings that you just cant get locally produced, and if they are things you really want or need then you have to live with that.

But otherwise, its so much better to buy local. Why not even go one stage further and go to a farmer's market or local farmshop to buy things. They are usually REALLY fresh too and not much more money