How much further does food travel when it’s not ‘local’?

 Posted by on 4 January 2010  Modern Life
Jan 042010
 

(Click on the image above to see it full-size (so you can read it). Or, go to Good.is for an “interactive viewer.”)

It’s not astonishing news that if you go to a farmer’s market, you’re getting fruits and vegetables that are grown closer to home than if you go, perhaps, to the “exotic” section of the supermarket.

But activist website Good.is has now shown you, graphically, just what the difference can be. The numbers are calculated for Iowa, they say, but should be broadly applicable no matter where you live. Hilariously, the chart they’ve created doesn’t just tell you, for example, that an onion has to travel 35 miles to get to a farmer’s market while it has to travel 1,759 miles to get to a supermarket.

No, they also break it down from a veggie perspective — that’s 633,600 onion-lengths! (to the farmer’s market. 32 million onion-lengths to the supermarket).

Awesome. And thought-provoking. Say what you will about online design wankery, there’s some very good stuff out there.

Grant Hamilton

  • Reader

    I like the idea of eating *more* local food from a range of perspectives – better for culture, food is more likely to be fresh, promotes food and biodiversity by supporting smaller scale producers, etc.

    But I have a serious problem with this ‘food miles’ movement – because it’s mathematical fiction.

    I realize miles are a convenient measure, but they’re too convenient. A hundred refrigerated food miles at sea on a bulk carrier (for example) is considerably cheaper and far more carbon efficient per unit than one food mile from grocery store to home in a plastic 7-11 bag. The irony of the 100 Mile diet is that it protects the worst per-unit part of the supply chain at the expense of some of the best. “Hey, honey, it’s ok if I drive my car five times a week to the farmer’s market – it’s better that way!”

    Add air freight, truck freight and rail into the mix and suddenly a 1:1 ratio of food miles could look more like 1:5 or 1:10 as an environmental expense ratio.

    Ignoring that fact is absurd.

    Recognizing it has huge implications for eating “locally.”

  • Colin

    Good points.

    Also of note is to have people thinking enough that they can assess their own situation and make choices independantly, in an informed way.

    I can go to the mall downtown once a week and buy farm produce, a lot of it organic and very low-carbon impact (for those that care about that sort of thing).
    I can walk there. I can use a cloth or re-useable bag to cart home my take. That’s a sight better than some suburban drone piloting their SUV from a poorly-planned suburb (which forced a city to extend water and other services) to do the same thing.

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

    @Reader — agreed, and agreed. Eating local is not always the most environmentally friendly thing you can do. There was a study a few months back about sheep, specifically. If you’re in the United Kingdom, and you’d like some nice lamp chops, it’s apparently better (in terms of total carbon emissions) to buy New Zealand lamb, rather than local lamb. That’s because it’s so darn EASY to raise sheep in New Zealand, and it requires much more land, food and effort to raise sheep in the United Kingdom. Basically, the carbon savings ‘pay’ for the carbon costs of shipping it halfway across the world.

    Despite this, I still lean towards local being better. Partly this is because it’s still a microscopic movement, compared with the global food industry. And partly it’s because I, too, enjoy supporting smaller-scale producers, especially local ones.

    Originally, the 100-mile diet was, if I recall, partly about finding food sources that were local in the sense of being idiosyncratic and historic. Just because Twinkies are made at the factory down the street does not make them healthy.

    Aside: I don’t know where they get their flour, but I can get locally-made perogies at Zellers. And made-in-Manitoba jam, honey and vegetables are almost old-hat at grocery store chains in town. It’s interesting to see big corporations supporting the “little guy.” I wonder if they do it on consignment, or what the deal they have worked out is.

  • Reader

    Yeah – don’t get me wrong. My point isn’t to bash local food, I think “lean toward local” is a nice rule to add to Pollan’s famous “eat food, mostly plants, and not too much” mantra. As a native BCer, the 100 Mile Diet book was an atavastic celebration of the BC I grew up to love; more than any other factor, it’s that ‘sense of place’ aspect of a local diet is the biggest selling point to me. And, not incidentally, Manitoba does a lousy job of developing and selling that aspect to residents and visitors alike.

    Re: local deals,many local suppliers of jam and honey are already exporters, so it’s no big deal for a chain to buy their stuff if its already processed and inspected. Vegetables, of course, are run by the Larry Macintosh racket so they sell in bulk already.

  • Mike Waddell

    While we still make the regular trek to the local chain grocery stores one of the simplest ways to cut back on the food miles is to ….. Wait for it….. Grow a garden. Whether in one’s own yard, the neighbour’s yard, a vacant lot…. Grow your own vegetables and you will be well within the hundred mile diet. Throw in a few backyard chickens and voila, less reliance on the corporate food chain. The part of this equation that rarely gets discussed anymore is the reality that if the trucks stop rolling the food into the stores due to (insert disaster from snowstorm to you name it) the food supply most of us rely on disappears in a hurry.

    Call me crazy but I believe in having a reasonable amount of food supply in one’s home to be prepared for any eventuality. It is a neat chart though.

  • MPot

    There is a sizable indoor farmer’s market within a 10-minute walk from my home, and it’s glorious, cheap, and super-convenient. Note that here in Windsor, however, “local” often means “from Michigan”. :P

  • Reader

    Is that So bad?

  • MPot

    Not at all! We love our Michigan brethern. Detroit’s less than a mile from my office. There are at least a half-dozen universities in Michigan that are closer to us than the nearest Canadian university, so we try to partner up with them on projects, conferences, etc.

  • Colin

    Further to Mike’s point — I think our provincial welfare program would do well to have family recipients take classes on growing gardens and providing their own food supply.

    There’s health benefits, self-esteem (which is priceless, especially to someone going through a hard time) from learning a skill and being self-sufficient and environmental benefits, too…the program that Blake Hamilton did in Brandon with community gardens was absolutely fantastic, BTW.

    Mike, we’ve talked of this before and it really is a super idea.

  • Mike Waddell

    How about making Garden supplies tax free as a symbolic gesture? I am awake at 2:10 am due to my neighbours dogs thinking it is a fun thing to call out our dog for a set to in the middle of the night… Oh, did I say that our dog was sleeping indoors?
    It could be that garden seed is tax free but I am not certain given my sleep deprived state.

    The other idea concerning those on assistance (or in any low income situation) would be to “glean” potatoes at any of the agricultural growers such as those at Carberry and Shilo. I realize that potatoes have limited nutritional value but the value of a potatoe to the human body is a whole lot higher if it isn’t coming in a foil bag as potato chips.

    Are there challenges to keeping potatoes any length of time without proper storage? Yes, but I recall very clearly that the MB Housing three plex we lived in back in the early to mid nineties had an unfinished basement that was cool enough to keep our potatoes for an extended period of time.

  • http://www.pennywise-books.com/ T. Keith Edmunds

    There are community gardens still functioning in Brandon, supported by the BNRC. Although they are positioned more as a community building project, I like the idea of using them to help support struggling individuals/families.

    Perhaps one large garden specifically for this group? Some of the produce could be used to help with food bills and the rest could be sold at a farmer’s market. The gardeners could be given some instruction on basic selling and bookkeeping and other skills, giving them more marketable skills allowing them to (perhaps) find a job, a better job, or get promoted at their current job. Barring that, the money raised could simply assist these individuals.

    Sure, there are all sorts of logistical issues: Who tracks the money? How is it used? Who gets it? I think this has some potential. I’m going to talk to people.