More to green picture than food miles - TreeHugger.com Jenna Watson

Whether tis better to consume local or green food? Can common sense help? If a product is grown locally and could be grown locally without expensive greenhouse and other (fossil fuel inputs) then it is probably a more environmentally friendly food: It may have lower "food miles" than an imported food. 

There are lots of great tools out there to help calculate food miles or food kilometers or ghg / unit of food. The challenge comes from the difficulty of consumers actually knowing the origin and the production techniques of their favourite snacks. What if the local food is actually produced in a more emission intensive manner than the imported food?

Fair trade is all about giving producers and workers a better deal while providing consumers with the choice to know that they are not eating or consuming bloody or slave produced treats.

The Fair Trade Labelling Organization (FLO ) is the biggest international body that certifies producers, importers, and is likely familiar to many N.A. consumers from the Transfair USA and Transfair Canada labels on coffee, tea, and chocolate.

The Institute for Marketecology (IMO) has created a "complimentary" fair trade / social responsibility set of standards that is more flexible and are easier to adapt to different production and labour conditions and goes beyond farmer coops. Fair For Life.