FOOD MILES

1. Antonia and Angela Locatelli FOOD MILES A.3.7 Discuss the concept of food miles and the reasons for consumers choosing foods to minimize ‘food miles’.

2. WHAT ARE “FOOD MILES”? ‘Food miles’ are a measure of how far a food item has been transported from its site of production to its site of consumption. WHY DO “FOOD MILES” MATTER? • Foods which have travelled a long distance have been transported by boat, airplane, train, or truck. • The longer the distance, the more fuel burned and therefore the more pollutants such as carbon dioxide produced. • Another aspect of ‘food miles’ is that it may involve live animals. The further the distance they need to travel, the greater the stress

3. “Food miles” raise the issue of personal vs. global choices. Would you rather buy a food that you really enjoy even if it had to travel a long distance or not financially support a system that pollutes so much?

4. THE TRICKY TRUTH ABOUT FOOD MILES Reducing food miles will support local food but won’t always cut carbon emissions Food miles are only a small part of a very large food emissions story: only 11% of the food emissions results from transportation, and just 4% of total emissions are final delivery transport from the produced to the retailer. Focusing only on food miles to reduce emissions is not enough.

5. THE TOMATO EXAMPLE Cutting food miles could actually easily increase your food’s carbon footprint. • In cooler climates people eat tomatoes all year round, despite the local weather not being favorable to growing them.   • Winter tomatoes in these places are either hot housed locally, using significant amounts of energy, or imported from warmer climates like Spain or Mexico. • When you analyze the respective carbon footprints of local and imported tomatoes it becomes clear that production emissions can easily surpass transport emissions. From the graph, it is clear that tomatoes imported from Spain to Sweden have much lower food prints than those locally grown. This is because the emissions generated to heat and light greenhouses in northern Europe far exceed the transport emissions of bringing tomatoes in from Spain.

6. Food that flies generates more than one hundred times the carbon emissions per kilometer of food that travels by ship.Limiting the amount of flying food can be a way to help reduce food transport emissions. •  If you know the food you are eating is shipped in from a far, the chances are those food miles create relatively few carbon emissions while providing valuable income to farmers in Africa, South America and Asia. • Even when food has been flown in, it can still sometimes be less carbon intensive than things grown locally.  This is because the carbon intensity of production in Africa for example may be lower than that in Europe.

7. SEASONAL LOCAL FOOD • if your motivation for eating more local food is carbon emissions, then it is better to try to eat seasonal local food. • By eating food that is both in season and local you can be more certain that both production emissions and transport emissions are limited.  You can often avoid them being refrigerated in stores too.  Even more importantly, seasonal food just tastes so much better.

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY • http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-miles • Higher Level Biology Developed Specifically for the IB Diploma p.348