Resources for comparing the environmental costs of different foods and products such as sugar v maple syrup?

Question

All food and products take a certain toll on the environment in production, transport, storage etc. I want to choose the most environmentally friendly option. I know meat takes a toll on the environment so I'm vegetarian. Obviously locally grown food is better. Now I'm looking further.

Watching a docco the other night I discovered that a lot of pesticides are used for sugarcane, these run off into the water, then to the ocean and poision sealife. There's a lot of production involved as it is a highly refined product. Then there's transport. There may be more to consider but that's what comes to mind. So I thought maple syrup would be better, I don't know about the process of sourcing or packaging maple. I am pretty sure to get real (not sugar filled immitation) maple it has come from Canada as I don't think Australia produces maple, so even more transport is involved.

I want to apply this ideal to all purchases. This is my dillema, any links or book references would be great

Answer 1

Most U.S.A. sugar no longer comes from sugar cane.  Over 97% of it comes from sugar BEETS now.  

Beets are cheaper to grow, require less work, and grow in more places than the tropical sugar cane will.

Most sugar beets are produced in Minnesota, North Dakota, and Idaho.

Unfortunatly the sugar plant in Sugar City, Idaho closed down.  Idaho's sugar beets are now shipped to California, via the railway system.

I understand a lot of the beets from the other states are also shipped to California to be made into sugar (but some of them might still have sugar plants).  Of course the sugar is then shipped everywhere from California.

Maple syrup (the real stuff) mostly comes from the East Coast, where there are still sugar maple trees.  Unfortunatly there are not many sugar maple farms left anymore.

Sugar maple farmers could not entice their children to take over the business of farming the maple trees.  The furniture manufacutres offered premium prices for the mature maple trees....so most of the farms were logged off.

It takes 40 YEARS for a sugar maple tree to become mature enough to produce it's FIRST sap for tapping to make sugar maple.

Almost no new sugar maple farms are being planted, since it is an investment in the future generation, and does not bennifit the persons own pocketbook.

You do not state what country you live in, so I cannot help you with specifics about your country (not that I know that much about sugar production in other countries that are not tropical).

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

P.S.  I live in Idaho now, and sugar beets are grown all around me.  They are a really unusual food crop.  They do not require much care after planting...just water.  After harvest, the sugar beets can sit out in piles 3-5 stories high, with the weather being in the negative digits.  It does not matter if they freeze solid.  GIANT bulldozers load them onto the open top traincars.  They load entire trains with nothing but sugarbeets.  Sugar beets are white inside.

Lots of sugar beets fall off the trucks during harvest time.  I stop along the roadside and pick them up.  My rabbits simply adore them.

P.P.S.  I just recieved my Winter 2008 copy of Small Farmer's Journal (come out only four times a year).

There is a very good article on Maple Syrup in this time.  Some of the things I learned from the article.  If you are tapping a Sugar Maple, put the tap in under a large branch, or over a large root....you get the best flow that way.  

It takes 40 gallons of the raw sap, to make on gallon of maple syrup.  The sap must be boiled down as soon as possible after harvest, since the raw sap begins to break down, and can become rancid.  So sap buckets are collected several times a day, and taken to the sugar shack, and boiled down.

The whole process is fueld by wood, fed constantly into the boiler.  The particular one in the article was built in 1975.  It captures the steam released by the sap, and uses it to preheat the new sap being poured in.  Takes quiet a while to boil 40 gallons down to one gallon.

A sugar maple must be 40 years old for its first tap.  Trees that are much older, and larger, may have several taps put into them.

If you are interested in this magazine, here's the link to their website.  You can buy individual magazines.

http://www.smallfarmersjournal.com/

It's the winter 2008 edition.

Answer 2

why dont you source local honey? There is also a plant called stevia which is very sweet and sweet cisely which if cooked with foods reduces the need for so much added sweetners.

You can get rapadura sugar which is naturally evaporated off the cane by the sun.