The complex climate truth about home-grown tomatoes

As news of the study spread, social media was awash with prickly comments from gardeners disgusted at the idea that their much-loved veg patch could be harming the planet.

By Chris Baraniuk
BBC
Mar 26, 2024

Excerpt:

You can tell these allotments have been here, on the Isle of Dogs in London, for a long time. Some of the sheds are former air raid shelters. “There’s a lot of that still here from the war,” says Paula Owen, a relatively recent arrival who has maintained her own plot for the last 10 years. “A lot of people make do and mend.”

There are raised beds made of repurposed scaffolding boards. No heavy machinery. And hazel sticks for propping up tomato and bean plants. Somewhat incongruously, the giant glass and steel towers of Canary Wharf, London’s shiny financial district, perforate the skyline to the north. But next door is a city farm, says Owen: “You can hear pigs and donkeys.”

Owen and many like her see their allotments or urban gardens as low-impact, low-carbon contributions to their local community. A place where you can grow your own food, with no need for plastic packaging or planes that bring in produce from abroad. And so she was surprised to see reports of a study published in January 2024 that suggested urban agriculture in the US and Europe is on average six times as polluting, in terms of carbon emissions, as conventional, commercial agriculture.

One form of urban growing not included in the study was backyard or home garden veg growing. For collective gardens such as community-run gardens, specifically, the research suggested they were the most carbon-intensive of all – at 0.81kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per serving on average, versus 0.07kg of CO2e for conventional agriculture. Meanwhile, individual gardens – one person’s allotment plot – were somewhere in between at 0.34kg of CO2e. Owen says she found the study “thought-provoking” but it left a sour taste. “It’s a bit like David and Goliath,” she says. “Why are they picking on the small guys?”

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