Watch Your Carbon Foodprint!

“The five primary needs; food, clothing, shelter, primary education and health care have to be made available to people within hundred miles of their stay,” Ela Ben, the founder of SEWA bank in India, expressed her thoughts when we interviewed her for Microfinance Insights.  I wondered whether people really care where their food comes from. Apparently they do!

Concerns about fair trade and food safety have compelled food enthusiasts to track the journey their food takes from farm to shelf. You’ve probably seen the country of origin labeling (COOL) concept*, which took off in the United States. One step ahead are Locavores**, – people who, inspired by ecologist Gary Paul Nabham’s book “Coming Home to Eat,” consume and promote the consumption of food grown within a 100-mile radius. The distance our food has traveled has assumed as much importance as what it’s made of.

The introduction of “food miles” into the dietary lexicon is not new. Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, London City University, coined the term in the early 1990s to describe the distance food travels to reach its final consumer. He strongly opposed the idea of apathetic consumption patterns and founded a network of NGOs to reverse the trend. Pierre Desrochers, Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto is currently researching the history of the food mile concept and has found very similar arguments made a century ago by American farmers who were severely impacted by the advent of a national railroad network and the sudden availability of cheaper food products brought in from other American states into their own backyards. He says, “If you view the ‘food mile’ rhetoric as thinly veiled agricultural protectionism, then the argument is probably as old as the movement of food over long distances.” Richard Pirog, Associate Director, Marketing and Food Systems Program Leader at Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University says, “I remember seeing that TESCO, a British retailer, had started to label fruits and vegetables it sold in the UK with little airplane marks (food mile labels) so that consumers could know that their produce had higher ‘air food miles.’”

But what can really happen if food miles are established as a proxy for the environmental impact of food? Experts say that if accepted as a standard for food import and consumption, food miles can indeed subvert the agricultural export sector in developing countries. But interestingly, it’s not only the developing countries that will suffer on account of such bans, but the impact on developed nations’ export sectors will be far from negligible. “After all, how do they expect to sell things to developing nations if [developing nations] don’t want to buy anything from them?” Desrochers asks.

It is interesting to note how food miles have been used to frame the debate over importing food into developed nations from developing nations by air. Marion Nestle, Professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University elaborates: “The ecological arguments associated with food miles are complicated and depend on many unverifiable assumptions. So depending on which assumptions one chooses, you can say that the carbon footprint is better or worse for foods produced near and far.”

The debate about green beans from Kenya being prohibited from entering the UK on the grounds that it would cause a detrimental effect on the environment a few years back stirred up the fair trade debate. Kenya’s carbon footprint is much lower than the UK’s, and imposing trade bans on Kenya on environmental grounds did not qualify for a logical argument. “But on the other hand, Kenya is in Sub-Saharan Africa, which means the green beans are dependent on irrigation. In effect, Kenya is shipping its water outside of the country. In the long term, is this the best thing for the people of Kenya; given that water is such a scarce commodity?” asks Pirog.

As the food mile debate continues, it is important to determine if it is much ado about nothing. “For someone like me who believes that the food mile debate is a distraction from more serious issues such as agricultural subsidies and protectionism, things are not looking good inasmuch as the number of food mile activists seems to be growing every day while their rhetoric remains unchallenged in most media outlets,” Desrochers says. Nestle adds, “The 100 (or 250) mile concept seems to have sprung up among lots of people, all of whom are writing books about their experiences. For most people, that would be too restrictive, especially if they live in areas with cold winters. If we in New York buy blueberries from Chile or Argentina in December, we are providing a market for farmers in those countries.”

Experts may continue to debate if the distance food travels from farm to plate is an over-simplistic measure of its impact on climate, and therefore, a logical argument for a trade ban against developing countries. The UK may, knowing that about 80% of its food emissions are produced before the food leaves the farm gate, choose to install expensive greenhouses to produce its own tomatoes and lettuce, instead of importing them from renewable energy-run Spanish farms. What is important though, is that beyond local or global, economic or social, there is a dimension to be defined in this debate: the human dimension. And Pirog sums it up beautifully, “It is important that all the people who grow and process our food – whether they are from our country or half-way around the world – are treated with dignity and respect and provided a fair and livable wage.”

* Country of origin information, through signs, labels, etc., is required regarding certain fresh meat products, e.g. steaks, ground beef, and pork chops, as well as certain fresh chicken products that are sold in retail stores

** The New Oxford American Dictionary chose “locavore” as its word of the year 2007