Disturbing news,or not?

I just read a similar article in the Telegraph which was more doom and gloom than this one. At least this one mentions the good aspects of growing your own.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...140408.htm

Its not disturbing at all - its conclusions are inaccurate, IMO, as it overlooks a crucial factor. The food miles that are required to transport crops from the fields to the factories for processing, packaging and onward travel to the shops - or the food waste from unsold food and its disposal. What is the carbon footprint of all of this handling - and has this been factored in before concluding that the Urban gardener (us) has a carbon footprint 6 times greater than conventionally produced (farmed) produce.
We normal ordinary folk (Urban gardeners)  gardening on our allotments and home gardens produce food that is eaten on the spot, with minimal food miles, more like foot steps. Urban gardeners may not produce in bulk, that's not the intention. We compost our waste and keep it local.

In conclusion, M'Lud, I submit that the conclusion in the paper are biased and unfounded on fact.

I’ll admit I didn’t read all of it because life’s to short to read all that when dyslexic. But what I thought from glancing over it, Was scare mongering, talking out their backsides, fake news, making mountains out of molehills.

As usual Veggie has summed up my thoughts a lot more eloquently than I ever could.

My Son (who has broken a family tradition and isnt a gardener) sent me the Telegraph scaremongering version of this on whatsapp.

My reply was Bull*hit (Cows cacky!)

Having quickly read the study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-023-00023-3.epdf) the biggest sources of carbon for urban farms are infrastructure (raised beds, sheds, composting bins), water and synthetic fertiliser. So you can massively reduce your impact by collecting rainwater, switching to organic amendments and not building raised beds from virgin materials every 5 years. They also relied on urban farmers tracking their inputs and harvest data, which for us home gardeners is uhh...a bit unreliable.

Curiously they have marked poorly managed composting as the highest-impact input. When a compost pile goes anaerobic it starts to release methane, which has 28x higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide. They didn't measure the gases coming off urban farm compost piles, so they have relied on information from other studies. They say ,"we estimate that careful compost management could cut GHGs by 39.4% on sites that use small-scale composting." So aerate your piles and keep them smelling sweet.

Here's an article where the one of the authors of the study discusses their findings more - https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-s...nal-study/

The Telegraph version mentioned that it was a way to downgrade allotments so Councils didn't need to supply them and could sell off allotment sites for housing developement to boost their coffers!

That's a crazy notion on the part of the Telegraph. If Allotments were to sold off for housing because they're not as sustainable (or whatever) as big agriculture farms, what justification would the councils have for keeping public parks? Think of all the fuel used in mowing the lawns, all the energy used to provide flowers for the planters and so on. Nah, its another load of cow-poo.

To be fair, we have lost 65% of allotments since the 1950s, and property developers would love to get some land for cheap. We've lost loads of farmland round here to housing developments in the last few years.

Ditto round here too. I often wonder where all the people come from to fill up the houses.

I've been looking at what infrastructure I have: a shed 36 years old and it was 2nd hand that the local children's play group were replacing,
a small greenhouse 40+ years, large greenhouse at leat 15years,
Polytunnel about 10 years,
galvanized mesh to keep out rabbits - in place for 40 years - dread to think what it would cost now to replace. 2 electric propagators about 10 and 30 year old. Then there is netting for pigeons and butterflies and fleece for frosts/insects. I can't remember the last time I bought a seed tray or plant-pot.

Most of the above has well paid for itself - which i suspect is related to lifetime carbon footprint. The polytunnel has been a so-so investment as it is too hot in summer but does give good crops of carrots, beetroot and cauli also more nectarines than we can eat most years. I would think my yearly incremental carbon footprint now is close to zero as I even save as much seed as possible and have cut down drastically on bought in compost.