Farm to plate - does distance matter?
Yes, but not as much as you think.
The globalisation of our food system has been a driving force of changes to our food culture and security - in many ways positive. In high-income countries, we now have the year-round luxury of eating what was once seasonal produce. At the same time, we’ve been introduced to foods that may be completely foreign to our local region - how’s that morning coffee taste?
These structural changes though do come at a cost.
‘Food miles’ is a way of talking about the environmental impact that our eating choices have. There are different ways you can measure it, but simply put it refers to how far your food had to travel to get from farm to plate. Or, in most cases, from farm to processor to warehouse to retailer to plate.
It’s not just the distance though. Food miles should also consider how the food was transported. Was it shipped? Did it go by plane? Was it in a refrigerated truck? All of these factors play a big role in the overall contribution of transport to your food emissions. For example, moving cargo by air can create more than 30 times more emissions than moving it by sea. And with increasing globalisation, we also know that food miles have been increasing.
Food miles are often used as an argument to support buying local produce, so let’s dig into this a bit more. How much do transport emissions really affect the sustainability of our food choices, and does buying local make a difference?
The big picture
When it comes to measuring the environmental impact of our food choices, transport isn’t everything.
There are a lot of key factors that aren’t considered when calculating food miles:
What production methods were used?
What inputs and chemicals were involved? E.g. fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides?
What type of food are we eating (a steak and a banana have very different environmental footprints)?
This isn’t to say transport emissions aren’t important, but they might be less relevant than you think. Some studies have put transport emissions at around 6% of global food-related emissions.
This is still up for debate, and another more recent study has put that figure much higher, at 19%. Ultimately, the number will depend on where we are and what we’re eating. What we can say for certain is that high-income countries contribute disproportionately (shocking, I know). The US, Germany, France, and Japan for example make up 12.5% of the global population but generate 46% of food transport emissions.
Even at the high end of estimates though, we’re still talking about 80% of food emissions originating from factors outside of transport. The conclusion I’d take from this is that food miles might be a useful tool to get a quick sense of where our food came from, but much more important is what we’re eating and how it was produced.
So, given that realisation, does buying local make a difference?
Effects of buying local
Here are just a few of the reasons that the above figures shouldn’t put you off buying local when you can:
Food miles can still matter a lot for certain foods. Things that perish very quickly (like berries) are often airfreighted which can have a huge carbon footprint. Refrigerated transport for cold-store goods is also more carbon-intensive. If you can afford to buy some of your food locally, these can be good choices to maximise the impact of your spending (and if you can’t afford it, frozen berries taste great too).
Local is more flavourful and nutrient-dense. Fruit and vegetables begin to deteriorate and lose nutrients (and flavour) the moment they’re picked or pulled out of the ground. Buying locally means that your apple is picked at its freshest point and gets to you in a matter of days, if not hours. At a big chain, the same produce could go through multiple warehouses and travel hundreds of kilometres before you pick it off the shelf.
Eating local means eating seasonal. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great having our favourite foods year-round. But until the last half century or so, eating local and seasonal produce was the rule, rather than the exception. Seasonality leads to natural diversity in our diet as we eat what’s available to us. With the loss of seasonality, our taste preferences have shrunk and so has the diversity of our nutrient intake. And this is harming our health. One recent study found that participants with highly diverse diets had a 71% lower risk of all-cause mortality than the group with the least diversity.
Finally, buying local enables us to make better decisions about what we buy. Remember earlier when we decided what we eat and how it’s produced is more important than where? Well, it’s a lot easier to know how your food is produced when you can buy it directly from the person who grew it.
So, just because food transport might not be as important as you thought, don’t let that put you off supporting your local market.