I understand your argument about the net c02 benefit of wrapping cucumbers in plastic. It doesn't mean plastic should be used or that it's good. You're not comparing the benefits of plastic wrap to the benefits of increased engine efficiency, or the c02 benefits of improved sales cycles or local agriculture vs global conglomerate food producers.
Drawing any conclusion from your c02 net benefit calculation assumes that we continue to do business exactly as we do today without improving, and ignores the possibility that there might be a point where there is no net benefit to wrapping cucumbers. The sources you provide elsewhere in this thread conclude that improving the processes involved in production of foods is where we should focus, not that we should wrap more things in plastic.
If we could sell 100% of cucumbers without wasting any cucumbers and without using plastic, that would be better than wrapping them in plastic, right? Unnecessary use of plastic is not good for the environment, right?
This cucumber thing feels like a sideshow distraction to sing the praises of plastic. Unnecessary single use water bottles are a massive global problem. Cucumbers, not nearly as much. There are legitimate uses of plastic, and I'd be happy accepting wrapping some veggies in exchange for getting rid of single serving plastic water bottles and the many other unnecessary uses of plastic that pervade.
> The run-off water from cattle feedlots, grazing pastures or the fields used to grow cattle feed cannot be readily recaptured in a usable form
Not immediately, but next year, right?
> this run-off water will have polluting effects on aquatic life due to contamination with nitrates.
You mention the pollution from agriculture but leave out the pollution from plastic production. Plastic production has immediately toxic pollutants, causing high rates of cancer to workers and nearby communities. Not to mention plastic waste itself being damaging pollution, with a lifespan far longer than nitrates.
>the c02 benefits of improved sales cycles or local agriculture vs global conglomerate food producers.
Do you have any data to support the notion that there is a net CO2 benefit to localizing agriculture? Considering how impacted agriculture is by locality, That seems vastly less efficient than large scale industrialized agriculture, and would be honestly quite surprising.
>Not to mention plastic waste itself being damaging pollution, with a lifespan far longer than nitrates.
As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the real issue isn't the consumers of Cucumbers, its developing countries and China[1] using their rivers and oceans for mass waste disposal.
> Do you have any data to support the notion that there is a net CO2 benefit to localizing agriculture? Considering how impacted agriculture is by locality, That seems vastly less efficient than large scale industrialized agriculture, and would be honestly quite surprising.
I pointed out that @jdietrich wasn't considering any of the many potential alternatives to wrapping produce in plastic, I didn't claim there's a net c02 benefit to local farms.
I don't think c02 emissions represent the sum total of "evironmental impact" as was implied multiple times above. c02 is important, but there are other important factors being ignored in this thread.
Implicit in your question is your assumption that large scale ag is more c02-efficient than local farming on the whole, which I would ask you to justify first. I don't know how to compare local farms to Conagra fairly, and I don't conduct c02 emissions research myself. But Conagra doesn't exist for efficiency, they exist to make money. Of course they value efficiency, but I would expect the scale of their operation adds more logistical problems to the food supply than it solves. They need to use far more transportation, refrigeration, processing and packaging than local food suppliers.
"Transportation of food accounts for about 11 percent of the GHG emissions from the food system."
"The energy used for refrigeration results in one of the main GHG effects from food production. Some products require constant refrigeration as soon as they leave the farm."
"Meat that is discarded in retail, industry and the home accounts for 20 percent of the total GHG emissions of meat production"
What do you mean when you say local ag "seems vastly less efficient"? Why? What efficiencies are there that offset the extra transportation, refrigeration, processing, and storage costs that global ag companies have over local farms?
Perhaps implicit or assumed in your point of view is the idea of growing the same produce locally that one would buy in the store, without changing consumption patterns at all? Is that what you meant by "considering how impacted agriculture is by locality"? I'm imagining some change in purchasing behavior and I recognize that growing bananas & coffee isn't possible everywhere.
>I don't think c02 emissions represent the sum total of "evironmental impact" as was implied multiple times above.
I completely agree. I'm also very reluctant to believe any report that estimates GHG emissions from industry, because I believe industry has a very real reason to misrepresent themselves in such reports. Whether that industry is growing and delivering tomatoes or LiPo Batteries.
>Conagra doesn't exist for efficiency, they exist to make money.
efficiency = money, i thought that was obvious. I'm a pretty strong believer in the power of markets.
>"Meat that is discarded in retail, industry and the home accounts for 20 percent of the total GHG emissions of meat production"
Not sure the relevance of that bit, how anyone can care about the environment and not be vegetarian is completely beyond me. I cringe everytime I go out to eat seeing how much meat gets tossed.
>Is that what you meant by "considering how impacted agriculture is by locality"?
Yes.
>I'm imagining some change in purchasing behavior
I'd call that fantasy. If we can't get people to drive fuel-efficient cars even with tax incentives, how are we going to get people to give up blueberries and pineapple in fruit salad? Especially considering how bad meat is, and how few are willing to give it up or even let those around them give it up--as being vegetarian for the last decade has taught me (/grandstand) The best thing we could do would be to create GMO versions of crops that need long distance transportation that either don't have the same environmental requirements to grow or are able to be transported without refrigeration, because the market isn't going to change. Regardless, we've got tens of millions living in the Desert South West, I don't foresee them all living on prickly pears.
> I'm also very reluctant to believe any report that estimates GHG emissions from industry
Same!
> efficiency = money, i thought that was obvious.
We have to be careful here. We've just switched to talking about overall production efficiency now, not the c02 byproduct efficiency that was being referred to. There is no t much of a direct market force to be efficient about c02 byproducts, in fact often the opposite, money and production efficiency is a force against reducing c02 emissions.
> how anyone can care about the environment and not be vegetarian is completely beyond me.
That's a great point. Not to mention Americans just eat too much. We could make huge improvements by eating less.
>> I'm imagining some change in purchasing behavior
> I'd call that fantasy.
That's a fair point, for as long as we have these options. A willing change in purchasing behavior might be unrealistic.
Drawing any conclusion from your c02 net benefit calculation assumes that we continue to do business exactly as we do today without improving, and ignores the possibility that there might be a point where there is no net benefit to wrapping cucumbers. The sources you provide elsewhere in this thread conclude that improving the processes involved in production of foods is where we should focus, not that we should wrap more things in plastic.
If we could sell 100% of cucumbers without wasting any cucumbers and without using plastic, that would be better than wrapping them in plastic, right? Unnecessary use of plastic is not good for the environment, right?
This cucumber thing feels like a sideshow distraction to sing the praises of plastic. Unnecessary single use water bottles are a massive global problem. Cucumbers, not nearly as much. There are legitimate uses of plastic, and I'd be happy accepting wrapping some veggies in exchange for getting rid of single serving plastic water bottles and the many other unnecessary uses of plastic that pervade.
> The run-off water from cattle feedlots, grazing pastures or the fields used to grow cattle feed cannot be readily recaptured in a usable form
Not immediately, but next year, right?
> this run-off water will have polluting effects on aquatic life due to contamination with nitrates.
You mention the pollution from agriculture but leave out the pollution from plastic production. Plastic production has immediately toxic pollutants, causing high rates of cancer to workers and nearby communities. Not to mention plastic waste itself being damaging pollution, with a lifespan far longer than nitrates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3327051/