Eating in America: A Closer Look at Food Miles

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A Closer Look at Food Miles

Among the priorities of many environmentalists is to shorten the distance from farm to table. Produce like grapes and broccoli generally travels over 2,000 miles to get to tables in Iowa, according to a 2001 study. While there are advantages to getting food from afar that can�t be grown locally, the environmental impacts can be severe; this same study went on to show that the conventional system, which brings food from across the United States, used 4 to 17 times more fuel than Iowa-based regional and local systems. Growing and transporting just 10 percent more of the produce for Iowa consumption in an Iowa-based food system, noted the study, would result in an annual savings of 280,000 to 346,000 gallons of fuel.

Part of the reason that conventional food is so artificially cheap, says activists, is that environmental costs of burning more fossil fuels and releasing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are not factored into prices. Brian Halweil of the Worldwatch Institute (see interview in this issue) adds in his book Eat Here, �subsidies for fossil fuels, roads, and other transportation infrastructure and for commodity production�all make food shipped round the world in a refrigerated cargo container, wrapped in layers of plastic, and grown on a highly polluting farm look artificially cheap. Proponents of the current system argue that it has succeeded because it is better and more efficient, but this is only true to the extent that many of these costs are not accounted for.�

In the United Kingdom, Carbon-info.org has developed a new software package�the food miles calculator�that lets consumers estimate the environmental impact of purchasing food products transported by ship, plane, and truck from overseas producers to supermarkets in the UK. The aim is to encourage shoppers to buy more of their food from local suppliers.

Studies in different parts of the United States indicate that

In parts of Europe, consumers can scan a product and call up a profile of the farm where it was produced.

consumers want to know more about the origins of the food they buy, especially when making their purchases. But most food labels don�t offer this information. That may be changing in parts of Europe where, says Phil Howard at the University of California-Santa Cruz�s Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, �meat is packaged with bar codes and stores are outfitted with computer terminals that allow consumers to scan the product and call up profiles of the farm where the food was produced.�

When given the option, Americans generally say they would prefer to buy their food from local suppliers because the food is judged to be fresher and they want to support local farmers. The movement to �buy local� is gaining ground to be sure, but it also has its detractors. Some point out, for example, that not buying food produced in developing countries may damage their economies, which often rely on food exports. Roy Jacobowitz at Acci�n International, which lends money to micro-entrepreneurs in developing nations, says that the �buy local� argument is an isolationist one. �Poor entrepreneurs in the emerging world need the opportunity to sell into markets that can pay fair prices for their goods,� he notes in an article in the Christian Science Monitor.

Other food researchers say that energy and resources are saved when buying food from the region of the world where it grows best. And products like pineapples simply don�t grow in Manhattan. Consumers have become accustomed to purchasing produce out-of-season, which usually requires shipping it long distances. One option that some propose is for consumers not to give up on buying food from distant places, but to focus on buying local foods when they can be grown locally or are available in-season.

Locally grown food can sometimes be more expensive because it�s not produced and processed in bulk. Hence, community supported agriculture (CSA) farms, where consumers buy a share of the farm�s harvest, have become a popular alternative for getting healthy, local food to low-income communities. A 25-acre CSA farm in Hartford, Connecticut, for example, serves 300 families and 11 community organizations, according to an article in the October 2005 issue of Orion magazine. Some 30 to 40 percent of its yearly harvest, or about 120,000 pounds of organic produce, goes to low-income local residents.

Page 1 - Eating in America: At What Cost?
Page 2 - A Closer Look at Food Miles
Page 3 - High Fructose Corn Syrup and Other Processed Foods
Page 4 - The Future of Organics
Page 5 - The Slow Food Movement

PERSPECTIVES HOME: Farm to Table

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