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Popular thinking about how to improve food systems for the better often misses the point, according to the results of a three-year global study of salmon production systems from Dalhousie University, Ecotrust and the Swedish Institute for Food & Biotechnology.
Rather than pushing for organic or land-based production, or worrying about simple metrics such as "food miles," the study finds that the world can achieve greater environmental benefits by focusing on improvements to key aspects of production and distribution.
For example, what farmed salmon are fed, how wild salmon are caught and the choice to buy frozen over fresh matters more than organic versus conventional or wild versus farmed when considering global-scale environmental effects such as climate change, ozone depletion, loss of critical habitat and ocean acidification.
The study is one of the first comprehensive global-scale looks at a major food commodity from a full lifecycle perspective, and the researchers examined everything — how salmon are caught in the wild, what they're fed when farmed, how they're transported, how they're consumed and how all of this contributes to both environmental degradation and socioeconomic benefits.
More information on this study and related publications is available at www.ecotrust.org/lca. The most recent published paper from the study can be found in the Environmental Science & Technology journal at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es9010114. | 
