On the Times op-ed page today, Sarah Murray raises the question of whether food miles, or calculating the distance traveled/energy used to bring you your food is a relevant measure of sustainability. She argues that some modes of transportation are more efficient, farmers in Africa use less energy-intensive agricultural practices, and foods grown far away are often delivered in bulk, for instance. But a lot of her argument seems based on faulty, or at least incomplete logic:
For a start, consider the relative efficiency of different forms of haulage. If you look at fuel consumption per pound carried, an oceangoing vessel carrying thousands of containers (a single 20-foot container holds about 48,000 bananas) does relatively well, while a 10-mile trip to the local farm stand in a large car to pick up a few bags of vegetables seems, in emissions terms at least, downright destructive.
Well, perhaps, if you don't factor in elements like the 10-mile round-trip drive to the grocery store by each person who wants to buy some of those 48,000 bananas. Or if you don't take into account the fact that the local farmer who grew those sacks of vegetables probably did so with less aid from mechanized contraptions than a large-scale operation is likely to use. Or if you neglect to take into account the absurd volume of pesticides used in many of these largely unregulated plantations, or the treatment and wages of workers there. The fact is, when you buy a bunch of bananas shipped from several thousand miles away, you're unlikely to have any idea how those bananas were produced.
Murray is right in that transportation shouldn't be the sole factor in calculating a food's sustainability. But that's not what the local food movement is about, at least not that alone. It's about bringing all of these factors into account in making decisions about what we eat -- health (both personal and planetary), food security and safety, and connection to what you eat and the people who grow it. Food miles are just one way of measuring how out of balance our food system has become, and giving us tools to talk about how to change it.
--Kate Sheppard
