Well, local foods has the last mile delivery problem for every single part of the journey since none of it can be made efficient.

last mile delivery is necessary for local food too and local food is typically more emission heavy per unit

It depends on the local and the food as well.

In what world is local food typically more emission heavy than imported food?

This one. For example, imported New Zealand lamb is significantly less carbon intensive than Welsh lamb (when consumed in the UK), because of country size and climate.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/nz-lambs-bette...

That is one cherry picked example... And it is an odd situation to have picked. The colony that has yet to have its nutrients extracted and exported requires less fertilizers. Who knew /s.

Hardly, it’s cherry picked in the other direction to favor local production due to the extreme distances involved. Compare veggies grown in Spain and shipped to London and the advantage is even later, but the distances are less impressive.

You're still taking a London centric view, which is very odd.

The context is India, remember. One of England's former colonies.

The study was comparing food consumed in the UK not India. It wasn’t suggesting producing apples/milk/lamb in New Zealand was the best option, just that it was more environmentally friendly for people in the UK to eat an Apple from New Zealand than that which was produced locally. Clearly there’s other options that involve less shipping.

> concluded that lamb imported from New Zealand is four times as energy efficient as lamb reared in the UK, even when carbon emissions from the transport process are taken into account.”

> The report shows apples and dairy products also have a smaller carbon footprint – half the size, in the case of dairy – when they are imported from New Zealand rather than UK-sourced.

> Professor Caroline Saunders, who led the research, said, “Food that has travelled long distances is perceived as being harmful to the environment and has some media attention in our key markets, especially Europe.

What? Why does any of that matter?

It's the example I know off the top of my head, because I'm from a Welsh farming town. Is that really so surprising? Transport is _incredibly_ efficient nowadays, it's completely expected that a better climate trumps transportation costs.

In a world where economies to scale in large production reasons = less GHG/per cultivated and the typical person involved in the production of the food has a much lower carbon footprint necessary to sustain their life.

If we are comparing farmers markets to grocery stores, last mile delivery to grocery stores is in semi trucks filled with a range of products not half full pickup trucks. People then drove to both and farmers markets are often longer trips.

As odd as it sounds, getting home delivery often beats driving to grocery stores, it really depends on routing and if you happen to make other stops on the trip.