Counting
Our Food Miles
by Wendy Priesnitz
For many of us,
our food is better traveled than we are. According to the
WorldWatch Institute, in the United States, food typically
travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate, as
much as 25 percent farther than in 1980. For some people, this
modern long-distance food system offers unparalleled choice.
But it often runs roughshod over local cuisines, varieties and
agriculture, while consuming staggering amounts of fuel,
generating greenhouse gases, eroding the pleasures of
face-to-face interactions around food and compromising food
security. And recent heightened concerns over global warming,
compounded by food poisoning scandals linked to contaminated
pet, poultry, and pig food ingredients from China, have many
of us thinking about where our food comes from…that is,
counting our “food miles” (or kilometers.)
In our quest for
permanent dietary summertime, in mid-winter we eat
strawberries that have been flown in from warmer climates and
make our own nasty little contribution to the greenhouse gas
emissions flood that is irrevocably harming our ecosystem.
Even food grown locally can rack up a lot of food miles. The
carrots you buy at the grocery store could have been
transported from the local farm to be packaged at a distant
central depot and then sent back to be sold near where they
were produced in the first place. Also, because of the way the
food processing industry works, ingredients travel around the
country – and beyond – from factory to factory, before
they make their way to your local store. Some of this has to
do with comparative labor costs. For example, some British
fish is now sent to China (where labor costs are much lower)
for processing, then sent back to the U.K. to be sold. For the
same corporate reasons, it is often impossible to buy
in-season locally grown garlic in a grocery store because the
shelves are full of garlic that has been grown more cheaply in
China or elsewhere. Unfortunately, this transportation factor
may even offset the positive environmental effects of organic
farming, according to a 2005 study by the journal Food
Policy.
The food miles
equation is a complicated one, depending on many factors.
Distance isn’t always the only factor, since a long journey
by boat, for example, has less environmental impact than a
shorter one by road or air. Also to be considered is the
negative environmental impact created by many trips by
personal cars to supermarkets or farmers’ stalls, compared
to that of a few truck loads to neighborhood stores that can
be easily accessed by walking or biking. Even the amount of
traffic – and therefore highly polluting starts and stops
– one encounters on the drive to the supermarket or
countryside must be considered.
Beyond that,
transportation is only one component of the total
environmental impact of food production and consumption. In
fact, any environmental assessment of food that consumers buy
needs to take into account how the food has been produced and
what energy is used in its production. According to a report
by the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs, it is, for example, likely to be more environmentally
friendly for tomatoes to be grown in Spain and transported to
the U.K. than for the same tomatoes to be grown in greenhouses
in the U.K. requiring electricity to light and heat them.
Quantifying all of
this is difficult. Researchers at the Iowa State
University-based Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
attempted to use a complicated formula to compare the impact
of selling locally grown produce versus conventionally handled
– and therefore well-traveled – produce. In a report
entitled Checking the Food Odometer, they found that
conventional produce items traveled from eight to 92 times
farther than the local produce to reach their points of sale,
and that the average food mile – or “weighted average
source distance” (WASD) – for locally grown produce to
reach markets was 56 miles, while the conventional distance
was 1,494 miles, nearly 27 times further. In 2005, using the
same WASD methodology, Toronto researchers Stephen Bentley and
Ravenna Barker compared food purchased at the Dufferin Grove
Farmers’ Market and a nearby supermarket and reported the
results in Fighting Global Warming at the Farmer’s
Market. They compared transport distances, energy
consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from seven locally
produced items and equivalent imported items. They found, for
example, that carrots from California traveled 59 times
further than carrots sourced from a nearby farm. While a half
kilogram of local lamb generated seven grams of carbon dioxide
through transportation, the same quantity of fresh New Zealand
lamb yielded over eight kilograms.
One way to help
consumers through this dilemma of calculating the effect of
their food purchases is to have mandatory country of origin
labels, known as COOL. In the U.S., COOL was incorporated into
the 2002 Farm Bill as a way of protecting American consumers
from mad cow disease and other threats from imported food. It
was never implemented, at least partly due to lobbying by
corporate agribusiness, the large supermarket chains and
trading partners like Canada, Mexico and Australia. However,
some groups are now lobbying for the implementation of COOL as
a way to measure the environmental impact of food.
Sweden seems to be
on a more useful track with its recent announcement of the
creation of a new label for “climate- friendly” foods.
Beginning next year, Swedes will be able to choose food
according to the impact its production and transportation
methods have on the climate. “It’s unlikely that a product
that has been transported by plane would be called
climate-friendly, for example,” says Jessica Elgenstierna,
spokeswoman for the Swedish food consumer organization KRAV,
which is behind the scheme.
The U.K. has also
started down the path of putting “carbon labels” on
products. The supermarket chain Tesco has said it will label
every product in its stores. The Carbon Trust, a government
agency, has already produced a prototype label and is trying
it out on shampoo, fruit juice and potato chips. The U.K.’s
largest organic certification agency, the Soil Association,
says it is considering refusing to certify produce that has
been imported by air; other options under consideration are a
selective ban, labeling and carbon offsetting.
Sustainable/local
farm product certification is also underway in Canada. A new
Toronto organization called Local Flavour Plus is developing
standards by which it can certify farmers and processors and
then link them with local purchasers. To be certified, farmers
and processors much employ sustainable production systems that
reduce or eliminate synthetic pesticides and fertilizers;
avoid the use of hormones, antibiotics, and genetic
engineering; and conserve soil and water. They must also
provide safe and fair working conditions for on-farm labor,
provide healthy and humane care for livestock, protect and
enhance wildlife habitat and biodiversity on working farm
landscapes and reduce food-related energy consumption and
greenhouse gas emissions through energy conservation,
recycling, minimal packaging and local sales.
As the Local
Flavour Plus standards suggest, there are more benefits to
eating locally than climate friendliness Farmers who are
selling to a local market are more likely to diversify
production, making it easier to farm sustainably. Preserving
local farm economies is another motivation. The Maine Organic
Farmers and Gardeners Association estimates that by
encouraging Maine residents to spend $10 per week on local
food, $100,000,000 will be invested back into farmers’
pockets and the Maine economy each growing season.
Presuming that one
manages to identify both locally produced foods and sources
for purchasing them, for those of us living in cold climates,
their exclusive consumption can make it a challenge to eat a
balanced diet. But thousands of people are taking up that
challenge, inspired, in many cases, by Alisa Smith and James
MacKinnon, a Vancouver, British Columbia couple who decided in
2005 that for one year, they would buy or gather their food
and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment. Their
adventure caught the fancy of the media around the world and
led to the launch of a website, a book and dozens of other
100-Mile Diet projects, eat local challenges and organizations
promoting local food systems.
Yes, local food
might be more expensive than the alternative, due to a variety
of government subsidies like price supports, tax breaks and
trucking/road infrastructure subsidies. But its price is a
more accurate representation of its cost of production…and
worth every penny in increased personal, community and
environmental health.
This
essay first appeared in Natural Life Magazine,
November/December 2007
copyright (c) Wendy Priesnitz 2008
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