Where does your food come from? How many miles does your food have to travel before it hits your dinner plate?
Not so long ago, for most of humanity, the majority of our food came from areas we could walk to or at least from within our own countries. These days, our food is increasingly from many thousands of miles away. We can express this distance as Food miles, which refers to the distance food is transported from the time of its production until it reaches the consumer.
It's amazing that we can enjoy many foods out of season and at relatively low cost; but the price paid in terms of environmental damage can be very high.
The environmental impact is mainly related to freight and shipping - more trucks, more planes, more ships, more consumption of oil and more greenhouse gas emissions. Produce in the U.S. travels, on average, 1300 - 2000 miles from farm to consumer. Since 1970, truck shipping has dramatically increased, replacing more energy efficient transportation by rail and water (National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service). Also, food imported from some countries may have been grown in very unsustainable ways. For example, rainforests may have been cleared, toxic effluent released into the environment from processing and inappropriate use of pesticides and herbicides applied to crops.
A brand of coffee I drink is grown in Brazil. That's a distance of over 3,000 miles (over 5,000 kilometers) as the crow flies. I then switched to buying a fair trade brand from Guatemala - under 2,000 miles - around 3,200 kilometers. Just to illustrate the difference, take a look at the map below showing the distance comparison between the origins of my usual brand of coffee (Brazil) and new brand of fair trade coffee (Guatemala).
You can take action on your next shopping trip. Try to buy local where you can - even if it's just one or two more products that you regularly use. Read labels on cans and learn more about what foods are in season within your country and try to utilize those more as there will be less chance of you accidentally purchasing imported foods. Better yet, consider starting a vegetable garden for your back yard (next spring). It will greatly reduce your food mile impact from thousands of miles to a few feet - plus saving you money!
Article modified from Michael Bloch
https://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/112/1/Food-miles-and-sustainability.html
Green Living Tips.com
Resources:
Food Routes https://www.foodroutes.org/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/FoodRoutes
National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service https://attra.ncat.org/farm_energy/food_miles.html
Teaching https://urbanext.illinois.edu/food/
Jonathon Little
Chemistry and Geosciences
10/14/2009 |