Northeast Grain Race and News

Catch up on the latest news about the Northeast Great Race, the forever chemical PFAS, neonicotinoid coated seeds, climate change, resilient plants and federal funding for car-free infrastructure.

By Steven Woods and Joe Scott
Updated on March 5, 2022
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by Steven Woods
Apollonia is a carbon-neutral schooner that uses wind power to ship goods sustainably in the Hudson Valley.

Have you heard of the #FoodMovementMovement? This May, you can see it in action as sailing vessels, solar-powered boats, and more will be racing to deliver the largest amount of grains over the longest distance with the least possible use of fossil fuels. Popcorn, malted barley, and flour are all being considered as cargo for these voyages, moving between mills, malt houses, breweries, and bakeries with an absolute minimum of environmental impact.

Hosted by the Hudson River Maritime Museum, Northeast Grainshed Alliance, The Center for Post Carbon Logistics, and Schooner Apollonia, the Northeast Grain Race brings attention to the low-to-no-carbon movement of food from farm to table in New England, New York, and New Jersey. Any vehicle or combination of vehicles can enter a single voyage in the month of May, and contestants in four capacity-based categories will earn one point per ton-mile of grain they move, but they’ll lose five points for every liter of fuel they burn or every 10 kilowatt-hours of power they take from the grid.

Ensuring sufficient cargo capacity to keep cities fed in a carbon-constrained future will be a significant challenge for sustainability advocates, governments, and humanity in general. For example, the inhabitants in the New York metro area require 50,000 metric tons of food per day to stay alive, and much more for optimal health. To supply this volume of food without carbon emissions is possible; New York City has a port, and thus could be supplied principally through sail freight, the maritime movement of cargo by primarily wind power. With a mere 10,000 small ships and 65,000 sailors, this zero-carbon fleet could be created and crewed with trained sailors within 20 years if we put the resources behind sail freight as part of a comprehensive climate change policy. We could drop 220,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually by doing so, when compared with all of New York’s food arriving via massive container ships, the next most efficient means.

Northeast Grain Race logo

Sail freight has already proven practicable for supplying cities. It has been used for more than 40,000 years in the South Pacific, and evidence suggests highly advanced trade networks existed that moved cargo by sail in the Mediterranean more than 4,000 years ago. The last sail freight vessels only stopped trading grain from Australia to the U.K. in 1949. Small-scale revivals are currently underway in Europe, the South Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Hudson Valley of New York.

While electric trains, trucks, cars, bicycles, and other electrified means of transportation are coming online and critical in supplying landlocked areas, the use of sail freight to reduce fuel use and stress on the grid by getting the shipment as close as possible to the food’s destination will help bring economical and ecological benefits.

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