Ever wonder how we are able to go to the supermarket and always pick up whatever food we want? How is there always a fully stocked shelf of fruits and vegetables all year round? With the advancement in technology, we are able to transport meat, produce and other products from all over the world. When it is winter in the Southern hemisphere, we can easily import from other parts of the world. However, with daily transportation of food products from farms to factories to retailers, a lot of environmental pollution is generated and emitted.
‘Food miles’ refer to the total geographic distance food between their cultivation, processing and retailers (The Conscious Club, 2019). This long-distance, large-scale transportation of food consumes large quantities of fossil fuels. “It is estimated that we currently put almost 10 kcal of fossil fuel energy into our food system for every 1 kcal of energy we get as food” (ibid.). Through the combustion of fossil fuels, greenhouse gases such as nitrate oxides and carbon monoxides are emitted, leading to air pollution, photochemical smog and negative health impacts (Yang and He, 2016).
Here is a website where you can calculate the ‘food miles’ of your food product. For example, the bananas which I bought from the supermarket in Singapore. Their origins are from the Philippines, and the results show that my food item has travelled: 1487 miles (2393km).
There are some limitations of ‘food miles’ calculations. Firstly, it can only calculate distance from the capital to capital, and some transportation within the country might not be accounted for. Also, it often does not account for the different modes of transportation- air, land and sea- and they result in different environmental impacts. We will be visiting these modes in the next post!
Trailing off,
Jade and Ridzuan
References
Foodmiles.com. (2017). Food Miles Calculator. [online] Available at: https://www.foodmiles.com/ [Accessed 22 Sep. 2020].
The Conscious Club. (2019). Food & Transportation- The Conscious Challenge. [online] Available at: https://www.theconsciouschallenge.org/ecologicalfootprintbibleoverview/food-transportation. [Accessed 22 Sep. 2020].
Yang, S. and He, L.Y. (2016). Fuel demand, road transport pollution emissions and residents’ health losses in the transitional China. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 42, pp.45–59.
