Letters

In February 2024, Prof. Sally Brown wrote a detailed analysis of the study, recently reported in the Eco-Update of the April 2024 issue, titled “Urban Agriculture Has Carbon Footprint Six Times Larger Than Conventional Produce.” The link to Brown’s analysis of this study in Biocycle is at https://www.biocycle.net/urban-agriculture-carbon-intensity/

I recommend anyone who was baffled by the Eco-update headline read this review. It’s worth thoughtful study to better understand the paper’s methodology, its limitations, and how this dataset could lead to what seems like a counterintuitive conclusion. For example, food quality was one of several metrics that were not included in the study’s analysis, and as Prof. Brown makes clear, several ambiguities about methodology remain unexplained, all of which have impacts on the final results. This topic is clearly worth a more detailed revisit.

Kathleen Sayce
Nahcotta, Washington