Food Miles

The term food miles refers to how far food is transported from the site of production to the site of consumption, and is thus meant to index the ecological impacts of the foods we eat. The term has been variably used to refer specifically to the miles food travels from farm to table as well as to the more encompassing term food miles food chain. Regardless, the common wisdom implied in the term seems that the fewer miles food travels, the more sustainably produced that food must be. However, it is not always quite that simple.

Tim Lang, often cited as having coined the term food miles, said that he and two colleagues first used the term in the early 1990s for a television documentary. In 1994, The Food Miles Report: The Dangers of Long-Distance Food Transport elaborated on the concept by describing food miles and their ecological impacts as accumulating all along the food chain (hence the elaborated term food miles food chain). This occurs via producer specialization requiring intensive inputs; energy-intensive processing, packaging, and/or preservation to prepare food for long-distance transport and extended shelf life; and the methods and distances of transporting food products to and from retail sites. A major focus of the report was the distance food traveled from farm to table, but the report also employed a holistic view inclusive of attendant costs such as pollution; subsistence adversity for small-scale producers; health (animal, human, and environmental); and more.

In sum, the intention behind the original food miles concept addressed environmental justice issues and paralleled what is now called embodied energy and lifecycle analyses. Over time, in the search to compare food prices to their larger costs, however, the concept of food miles has been oversimplified by many and has lost some of its initial scope.

While arguing that intensive agricultural methods and long-distance transportation cause significant ecological damage, the Food Miles Report acknowledged that there are sometimes tradeoffs in terms of energy consumed in agricultural production and the energy used in transport; for example, it can be more energy efficient to grow certain products in natural or well-suited climatic conditions and then transport them to distant destinations, rather than use intensive methods to grow them in unsuitable climates. A number of more recent studies have attempted to quantify and qualify such efficiencies to determine when local or imported food is better environmentally; in the process, they offer alternatives to food miles. Fundamental to such studies is the understanding that many people in the world will continue to eat foods produced far beyond the localfoods ideal of a 100 mi. radius.

One study, titled “Food Miles: Comparative

Energy/Emissions Performance of New Zealand’s Agriculture Industry,” critiqued the abbreviated usage of food miles as not representing overall impacts of food production. In this study, researchers compared energy usage and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in New Zealand and the United Kingdom (UK) during the production of milk solids, lamb, apples, and onions. Calculations indicated that New Zealand used notably less energy (even including transportation to distant markets), incorporated fewer inputs such as fertilizers, and produced fewer carbon emissions in producing milk solids, lamb, and apples. With onions, the UK’s initial advantage of lower energy inputs in growing the crop was erased by energy costs associated with long-term storage. The overall conclusion of the study suggested that sometimes, the greater environmental good could be served by shipping foods long distances. Further, the report claimed that the more commonly used and simplified version of the food miles concept did not effectively consider lifecycle inputs and negative externalities.

Still more critiques of the concept of food miles claim that food miles labeling falls short of being effective and comparable measures of environmental impact. Other efforts include recently proposed carbon labels and attempts to measure the embodied energy and environmental costs of agricultural equipment and processing industries; harvesting techniques; water capture, usage, and treatment; inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides; means of transportation; kinds of energy used; carbon capture; packaging; preservation and storage procedures; waste disposal; and other cultivation and processing inputs.

The term and concept of food miles, while becoming part of common parlance only in the 1990s, has had a tumultuous history. Tim Lang’s original intent of “…highlight[ing] the hidden ecological, social, and economic consequences of food production to consumers in a simple way” has led to deep conversations about and detailed studies of the short and long-term costs of what we eat.