The Food Miles Mistake

Saving the planet by eating New Zealand apples


I stopped by my favorite boutique grocery store to pick up a red onion today. The young clerk running the cash register wore a t-shirt with the slogan "Eat Local." Oddly, the shop's shelves and coolers were stuffed with cheeses, sausages, olives, jams, cookies, and crackers from California, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Germany, and many other exotic locales. As I walked home, I mused over the fact that I needed the onion to go with the organic Irish salmon and the Spanish capers my wife and I were having for dinner. The salmon was a gift from a visiting friend from Dublin. Now, I enjoy seeking out and eating locally produced foods. My wife and I make it a habit to shop at our town's weekly farmers market for fresh fruits and vegetables.

But for some activists, eating local foods is no longer just a pleasure—it is a moral obligation. Why? Because locally produced foods are supposed to be better for the planet than foods shipped thousands of miles across oceans and continents. According to these activists, shipping foods over long distances results in the unnecessary emission of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. This concern has given rise to the concept of "food miles," that is, the distance food travels from farm to plate. Activists particularly dislike air freighting foods because it uses relatively more energy than other forms of transportation. Food miles are supposed to be a simple way to gauge food's impact on climate change.

In their recent policy primer for the Mercatus Center at George University, however, economic geographer Pierre Desrochers and economic consultant Hiroko Shimizu challenge the notion that food miles are a good sustainability indicator. As Desrochers and Shimizu point out, the food trade has been historically driven by urbanization. As agriculture became more efficient, people were liberated from farms and able to develop other skills that helped raise general living standards. People freed from having to scrabble for food, for instance, could work in factories, write software, or become physicians. Modernization is a process in which people get further and further away from the farm.

Modern technologies like canning and refrigeration made it possible to extend the food trade from staple grains and spices to fruits, vegetables, and meats. As a result, world trade in fruits and vegetables—fresh and processed—doubled in the 1980s and increased by 30 percent between 1990 and 2001. Fruits and vegetables accounted for 22 percent of the exports of developing economies in 2001. If farmers, processors, shippers, and retailers did not profit from providing distant consumers with these foods, the foods wouldn't be on store shelves. And consumers, of course, benefit from being able to buy fresh foods year around.





Nevertheless, organic food activists in Britain's Soil Association argued for lifting the organic certification from Kenyan food exports because they are brought into Britain on airplanes. Some high-end British retailers have begun slapping a label featuring an airplane on various food products to indicate that they have been air freighted. Kenyan growers cannily responded by launching their own "Grown Under the Sun" label, pointing out that their agricultural production methods emit far less greenhouse gases than many crops grown in Britain do.

A die-hard response to the above studies would be: Don't eat either British or Spanish tomatoes out of season; don't cold store apples, dry them in the sun instead; don't ever eat dairy products; and give your true love a bouquet of in-season root vegetables for Valentine's Day. In order to reduce your food miles, the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service makes these recommendations: Eat foods that are in season; eat minimally processed, packaged, and marketed food; use public transportation when grocery shopping; can and dry fruits and vegetables yourself; and plant a garden and grow as much of your own food as possible. In other words, spend more time and effort finding, growing, and preparing food at the expense of other productive or leisure activities.

