Everything about Food Miles totally explained
Food miles is a term which refers to the distance
food is
transported from the time of its production until it reaches the consumer. It is one dimension used in assessing the
environmental impact of food.
Overview
The concept of food miles is part of a broader issue of
sustainability which deals with a large range of environmental issues, including
local food. The term was coined by Tim Lang (now Professor of Food Policy,
City University, London) who says: "The point was to highlight the hidden ecological, social and economic consequences of food production to consumers in a simple way, one which had objective reality but also connotations."
A
DEFRA report in 2005 undertaken by researchers at
AEA Technology Environment, entitled
The Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator of Sustainable Development, included findings that "the direct environmental, social and economic costs of food transport are over £9 billion each year, and are dominated by congestion."
Recent findings indicate that it isn't only how far the food has traveled but how it has traveled that's important to consider. The positive environmental effects of specialist
organic farming may be offset by increased
transportation, unless it's produced by local
farms. But even then the logistics and effects on other local traffic may play a big role. Also, many trips by personal cars to shopping centers would have a negative environmental impact compared to a few truck loads to neighborhood stores that can be easily accessed by
walking or
cycling.
Food miles in business
Business leaders have adopted food miles as a model for understanding inefficiency in a
food supply chain.
Wal-Mart, famously focused on efficiency, was an early adopter of food miles as a profit-maximizing strategy. More recently, Wal-Mart has embraced the environmental benefits of
supply chain efficiency as well. In 2006, Wal-Mart,
CEO,
Lee Scott said, "The benefits of the strategy are undeniable, whether you look through the lens of
greenhouse gas reduction or the lens of cost savings. What has become so obvious is that 'a green strategy' provides better value for our customers". Wal-Mart has since made a series of environmental commitments that suggest the company is looking more holistically at supply chain sustainability, such as restricting
seafood suppliers to
fisheries independently certified as sustainable, a practice that may increase food miles.
A 2006 research report from
Lincoln University, New Zealand counters claims about food miles by comparing total energy used in
food production in
Europe and
New Zealand, taking into account energy used to ship the food to Europe for consumers. The report states, "New Zealand has greater production efficiency in many food commodities compared to the UK. For example New Zealand
agriculture tends to apply fewer
fertilizers (which require large amounts of energy to produce and cause significant
CO2 emissions) and animals are able to
graze year round outside eating grass instead of large quantities of brought-in
feed such as
concentrates. In the case of
dairy and sheep meat production NZ is by far more
energy efficient, even including the transport cost, than the UK, twice as efficient in the case of dairy, and four times as efficient in case of
sheep meat. In the case of
apples NZ is more energy efficient even though the energy embodied in capital items and other inputs data wasn't available for the UK."
Further study on the total
carbon footprint of food is required, of which transport may or may not make a large contribution. However, "Food Miles" signals more than just carbon footprint - which came into being several years later, and also includes transport of
virtual water, life cycle assessments, land use and the inefficiencies of moving similar foods backwards and forwards over the same ground.
A commonly ignored element is the local loop. The act of driving further to a more "right-on" food source increases the total carbon footprint. A shopper may buy say 5kg of meat and use about a gallon to get it. That piece of meat could have gone over 60,000 miles by road (40tonner at 8mpg) to require the same carbon in transportation. However, this is an extreme scenario, in which a consumer burns a gallon of gasoline (30 or 40 miles of travel) to buy a single food item, 5 kg of meat. While extreme consumer behaviors can certainly cancel any environmental benefit arising from any food-buying choice, it's a different question whether consumer behaviors do so
in practice.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Food Miles'.
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