The Article That Shook Up The Gardening World

Science correspondent Joe Pinkstone of The Telegraph, a British publication, shook up the gardening world last month when he wrote an article that claims vegetable gardens are worse for the environment than mass produced food grown on conventional farms.

In the article, Pinkstone cites a study that claims that the “carbon footprint of homegrown foods is five times greater than produce from conventional agricultural practices, such as rural farms.”

The study from researchers at the University of Michigan appeared in the journal Nature Cities. The researchers measured the CO2 produced from a single serving of food grown at a conventional farm at 0.07 kg. The study said backyard vegetable gardens produce almost five times as much CO2 for an individual serving of food – roughly 0.34 kg.

“The majority of the emissions do not come from the growing of the food themselves, the scientists say, but from the infrastructure needed to allow the food to be grown,” Pinkstone writes.

The University of Michigan study identifies structures such as raised beds and garden sheds as the biggest contributor of greenhouse gasses. The study says gardeners can lessen their carbon footprint by using recycled materials for these types of structures.

The study also says that some garden crops are more eco-friendly than others, such as tomatoes and asparagus. That’s because store-bought tomatoes and asparagus are often grown far away and require extensive shipping. But for the most part, Pinkstone says, the planet would be better off if folks abandoned their gardens and instead consumed vegetables grown by megafarmers on an industrial scale.

“Fruit was found to be 8.6 times more eco-friendly when grown conventionally compared to in a city, whereas vegetables were 5.8 times better for the environment when left to the professionals,” his article says.

I find this all very curious, because the oldest and most effective method of reducing carbon in the atmosphere is by growing plants – something the earth has been doing for hundreds of millions of years.

Readers on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) also had lots of questions: “Did they count in the roads to a commercial farm, the tractors and combines, the semi’s to haul it away?”

“The study only seems to reference CO2 emissions too. What about other environmental impacts? Habitat destruction? Species loss from insecticide and herbicide use? Ground water contamination? Soil erosion and depletion? Transportation emissions? Food wastage?”

“... it feels like gaslighting by the food industry.”

“I’d like to see who’s paying your paycheck.”

I wrote to Joe Pinkstone, the writer for the Telegraph, to ask about the response to his story.

“The write-up was a straight science story, covering the findings of a study published in a peer-reviewed journal,” Pinkstone said. “There was no spin or angle, just a lay person translation of the findings, in essence. I have done so thousands of times, it is a staple of my job.”

I reached out to the lead author of the study, University of Michigan Ph.D. student Jason Hawes, to ask about the differences between conventional farming versus organic practices, which can enhance soil life such as algae and bacteria that improve carbon sequestration.

“The differences in soil carbon sequestration is an important area of future research in this space,” Hawes said. “From our data, we could not draw any final conclusions about this - but we do hope that others will attempt to better understand this in the future.”

The study said smallscale composting, especially in an anaerobic environment, increases greenhouse gasses. But what if those kitchen scraps ended up in the landfill instead? How would that compare in terms of greenhouse gas emissions? Hawes said the data suggests it does not matter.

“This is a good question, and we actually did this analysis to check out results. We wondered - what happens if instead of penalizing urban ag for the compost methane created, we credit it for the landfill methane avoided? We found that the overall results do not change - urban agriculture is still significantly more carbon intensive than conventional ag on average, as are individual gardens and collective gardens when analyzed separately.”

Some commenters on social media suggest that the research was funded by “Big Ag” corporations.

“I’ve heard some folks suggest that - and I can tell you that it is definitely not true,” Hawes said. “Our work was conducted independently with no external pressures for certain results.

The response to Pinkstone’s story, though, is even more interesting to me.

“I wrote the story for UK allotment (garden) owners, as it is a common pastime here, with allotments and veg patches very common in villages and rural English towns,” Pinkstone said. “My instincts were right, and UK readers found the story interesting, but the US audience response was much different, for unknown reasons.

“It is not a particularly controversial ‘hot potato’ topic, and though people are passionate about gardening, it is not one of the more divisive wedge issues in modern society,” he added. “I thought it would be a write, file, forget story.”

But then messages began flooding his inbox.

“A tweet I put out on the story received an unusual amount of negative attention,” he said. “Where this came from I am unsure, but I was deluged with emails, Twitter messages, Instagram messages, LinkedIn messages with spectacular levels of hate.”

He sent me a few of these messages. The nicest one called him a “garbage human being.” The others involve some of the foulest words I have ever read. I doubt the people who wrote those things are actually gardeners, who are some of the sweet, kind-hearted people I know. That’s all very unfortunate, because Joe seems like a really nice guy.

“It is very bizarre, and I’d like to know who got these folks so riled up,” he said. “It’s given me and my friends lots of laughter reading the messages as people send death threats over sheds, compost and tomatoes!”

By the way, Pinkstone told me he is not a gardener because he lives in London in a “small and overpriced flat.” But he does come from a gardening family. “I grew up with an allotment in the family, and gardening was, and still is, a popular hobby for my family,” he said. “I have no agenda against the green-fingered public!”