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Globetrotting food will travel farther than ever this Thanksgiving by Worldwatch Institute
(Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2002 -- CropChoice guest commentary) -- When far-flung families get together for Thanksgiving dinners next
week, much of their food will have logged more miles than their relatives and friends
around the table, finds a new study by the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental and
social policy research organization based in Washington, D.C. In the United States,
food now travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to table, as much as 25
percent farther than two decades ago.
"The farther we ship food, the more vulnerable our food system becomes," says
Worldwatch Research Associate Brian Halweil, author of Home Grown: The Case for Local
Food in a Global Market. "Many major cities in the U.S. have a limited supply of
food on hand. That makes those cities highly vulnerable to anything that suddenly
restricts transportation, such as oil shortages or acts of terrorism."
This vulnerability is not limited to the United States. The tonnage of food shipped
between countries has grown fourfold over the last four decades. In the United
Kingdom, for example, food travels 50 percent farther than it did two decades ago.
This reliance on long-distance food damages rural economies, as farmers and small
food businesses become the most marginal link in the sprawling food chain. This trend
also creates numerous opportunities along the way for contamination, while
contributing to global warming, because of the huge quantities of fuel used for
transportation.
"We are spending far more energy to get food to the table than the energy we get
from eating the food. A head of lettuce grown in the Salinas Valley of California and
shipped nearly 3,000 miles to Washington, D.C., requires about 36 times as much
fossil fuel energy in transport as it provides in food energy when it arrives,"
Halweil says.
Surveys have shown that a typical meal -- some meat, grain, fruits, and
vegetables -- using local ingredients entails four to 17 times less petroleum
consumption in transport than the same meal bought from the conventional food chain.
While most economists believe that long-distance food trade is efficient because
communities and nations can buy their food from the lowest-cost provider, studies
from North America, Asia, and Africa show farm communities reap little benefit, and
often suffer as a result of freer trade in agricultural goods.
"The economic benefits of food trade are a myth. The big winners are agribusiness
monopolies that ship, trade, and process food. Agricultural policies, including the
new Farm Bill, tend to favor factory farms, giant supermarkets, and long-distance
trade, and cheap, subsidized fossil fuels encourage long-distance shipping. The big
losers are the world's poor."
Farmers producing for export often go hungry as they sacrifice the use of their land
to feed foreign mouths, Halweil says. Poor urbanites in both the First and Third
Worlds find themselves living in neighborhoods without supermarkets, green grocers,
and healthy food choices.
Halweil points to a vigorous, emerging local food movement that is challenging both
the wisdom and practice of long-distance food shipping. "Massive meat recalls, the
advent of genetically engineered food, and other food safety crises have built
interest in local food," he says. "Rebuilding local food economies is the first
genuine profit-making opportunity in farm country in years."
In the United States, the number of registered farmers' markets has jumped from 300
in the mid-1970s and 1,755 in 1994 to more than 3,100 today. Approximately three
million people visit these markets each week and spend over $1 billion each year.
Innovative restaurants, school cafeterias, caterers, hospitals, and even supermarkets
are beginning to offer fresh, seasonal foods from local farmers and food businesses.
"Locally grown food served fresh and in season has a definite taste advantage,"
says Halweil. "It's harvested at the peak of ripeness and doesn't have to be
fumigated, refrigerated, or packaged for long-distance hauling and long shelf-life."
In the United States, more than half of all tomatoes are harvested and shipped green,
and then artificially ripened upon arrival at their final destination.
"Of course, a certain amount of food trade is natural and beneficial. But money
spent on locally produced foods stays in the community longer, creating jobs,
supporting farmers, and preserving local cuisines and crop varieties against the
steamroller of culinary imperialism. And developing nations that emphasize greater
food self-reliance can retain precious foreign exchange and avoid the instability of
international markets."
For more information, please contact:
Susan Finkelpearl, Media Coordinator, 202.452.1992 x517, sfinkelpearl@worldwatch.org
Purchasing Information: Home Grown: The Case for Local Food in a Global Market costs
$5 plus shipping and handling, and can be purchased through the Worldwatch website:
http://www.worldwatch.org or by calling 1-888-544-2303 (in US) or 1-570-320-2076 (from
overseas) or by faxing 570-320-2079. | |
