Food miles

Food miles is a term which refers to the distance food travels 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 list 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 Paul Watkiss and 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 is not only how far the food has traveled but how it has traveled that is important to consider. The positive environmental effects of specialist organic farming may be offset by increased transportation, unless it is 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. A flavorer endeavors to eat food from within a "food shed" having a radius of 100 miles.

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. Still it is undeniable that Wal-Mart's strategy of using supply chains from as far away as China exorbitantly increases greenhouse emissions. They are often criticized for "green washing" and only adopting large-scale green tactics, which make them appear earth-friendly but actually have little positive environmental impact.

Food mile calculation problems

The calculation of food miles ignores questions of scale. Consider the following simplistic example: a small family farm produces 10 tons of produce, but has a small truck with capacity for only 1 ton. If the farm is located 100 miles away from market, each piece of produce only travels 100 "food miles"; however, 10 trips are required to bring that produce to market. Now consider a farm located 1000 miles away but with a 10-ton truck. That farm's produce would travel 1000 "food miles" while consuming a comparable amount of energy.

However, this argument does not take into account the fact that a larger truck requires more fuel, effectively making it less efficient. Regardless, there is a need when reporting food miles to standardize by some quantity measure. A more relevant indicator would be the "average number of food miles per ton" or per other unit of measure for a certain shipment. A better all round indicator, which would address some of the problems below, also, would be a measure of total embodied energy per ton.

A non-holistic approach

Critics of food miles point out that transport 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. A recent DEFRA case study indicated that tomatoes grown in Spain and transported to the United Kingdom may have a lower carbon footprint in terms of energy efficiency than tomatoes grown in the United Kingdom, because of the energy needed to heat greenhouses in the UK .

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 was not 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.

See also

• Carbon footprint
• Local food
• Fair miles

External links

• The Carbon Footprint of a Localvore - How do food miles add up?
• Food miles at DEFRA
• The Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator of Sustainable Development
• Food miles at Wordspy
• Farmers Weekly Food Miles Campaign - Local Food is Miles Better at Farmers Weekly interactive
• Food Miles Info and Calculator
• News/Views from Kenya