I guess that it depend on both of the kind of nuts and where they grow. I've heard that Californian almonds require a lot of water, but they grow on the wild on the south of France (so without any irrigation).
zlita
joined 2 months ago
As you noted yourself, this is scope 3 emissions, meaning that if I buy a ton of coal and put on fire in my garden the associated emission will be counted toward the company which extracted it.
Such accounting is useful to understand which company produce highly polluting stuff but saying that the emission come from them is highly misleading. Using this way to count emission I'm never responsible for any emission whether it is burning coal for fun, taking the plane every morning or eating exclusively beef. What it says to people is basically that they have no responsibility and shouldn't make any change.
You are right, the second farm would produce beef which emit a lot more co2. However, even with the best practices the beef stay way more polluting than any other food as their emissions do not go below 40kg/co2 per kg of meat. This is due to the fact that a big part of the emissions are due to methane emitted by cows.