Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture
Earlier this month, here in the UK, I stumbled upon an episode of Tim Harford's More or Less on BBC Radio 4. Tim interviewed Jason Hawes, a researcher from the University of Michigan. Jason and his colleagues recently published this article, Comparing the carbon footprints of urban and conventional agriculture , in the academic journal Nature Cities . This publication is not to be sniffed at. Nature Cities is a new offshoot of the esteemed academic journal Nature no less. Now, I'm not going to mince my words. For allotmenteers out there, Jason's research findings make sober reading. Their results suggest that low-tech urban farming, the sort of vegetable production we do in our home gardens and allotment plots, emits six times more carbon into the atmosphere per serving of food than conventional industrial agriculture. Wait, what? Gah! Initially, that depressing finding sounds just baffling. How can it be true? This is the exact question Tim put to Jason in his interv