Counting Food Miles: The Hidden Cost of Your Meal
In a world where food travels great distances before reaching our plates, the concept of food miles is significant. Let's discuss the hidden costs of our food footprint and the miles meals travel to get to us.
Food miles are just one piece of the environmental impact of traditional agriculture. Here at Eden Green, we use cutting-edge technologies in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) and hydroponics. With these innovations, we are rewriting the narrative of food transportation.
| Criteria | Eden Green's Vertical Farms | Traditional Farms |
|---|---|---|
| Land Use | 99% less land used | Uses more land |
| Water Use | 98% less water used | Uses more water |
| Food Miles | 85% fewer food miles, with produce grown within 300 miles of consumers | Longer food miles, often involves global transportation |
Understanding Food Miles
Today’s consumers don’t want to worry about seasonality. People in the Midwest want to enjoy tropical fruits and vegetables. Those in the desert expect grocers to stock foods that need a lot of water to grow.
Next, we have all those processed convenience foods at your local store. Each of these foods is made of many different ingredients, often traveling from all over the world.
Consumer demand leads to our food supply becoming increasingly global, as fresh foods are shipped all over the globe.
What Are Food Miles?
Food miles represent the distance food travels from production to consumption. This concept includes single-ingredient foods like summer fruits and veggies in the dead of winter. It can also include processed foods, with various fresh foods shipped to a single location to be processed into an end product.
For example, a single jar of Nutella consumed in London has traveled an estimated 28,731 food miles to get there. By contrast, circumnavigating the globe at its widest point would be 24,901 miles. So why is one example product traveling farther than that?
For our jar of Nutella, the sugar and soy come from South America, while the cocoa is from Africa. The hazelnuts come from the Middle East, and the vanilla and palm oil from the Far East. All of these products must be transported to the plant in which the Nutella is produced. Then, the final jars travel again to supermarkets worldwide.
Food mileage can have a significant environmental impact. It influences climate change, pollution, and energy consumption. It may also lead to waste due to spoilage and/or damage in transit.
The Environmental Impact of Food Transportation
The primary way that food miles impact our environment is through carbon emissions. We’ll spend some time discussing this problem, but other environmental costs are at play here. Let’s dive into these impacts to understand why food miles are so problematic.
Carbon Emissions
Traditional supply chains contribute significantly to carbon emissions. All of this travel adds up to create a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the European Commission estimates that global food miles account for almost one-fifth of CO2 from food. Since food and agriculture are among the primary sources of greenhouse gasses, this is a massive impact.
Other Environmental Costs
Beyond carbon, food miles also take a broader environmental toll. They contribute to pollution and energy consumption associated with food transportation. They can also lead to significant food waste. Delicate foods are bumped and bruised in transit or spoil due to time spent on the road.
Then there are the social aspects of food miles. This is a problem largely created by the most affluent countries. CarbonBrief estimates that while high-income countries make up only 12.5% of the global population, they account for more than half of the world’s food miles. Meanwhile, many of the poorest countries are sources of our well-traveled food products. Workers there make pennies and often endure terrible working conditions with few or no health and safety considerations. The exception is products listed as Fair Trade Certified (or otherwise careful about labor practices).
Reduced shelf life results in more food waste.
Inefficiencies in the Traditional Food Supply Chain
The hard truth is that our current food supply chain is in grave need of an overhaul. Here are just a few of the most common inefficiencies we need to address:
Losses in transit: Improper handling, shipping delays, and poor storage conditions all lead to significant waste in the food supply chain.
Inconsistent supply chains: Inclement weather, natural disasters, and armed conflicts can all lead to a shortage in the supply chain. This shortage leads other areas of the world to ramp up production. In the following season, the supply chain may be flooded with the product previously in short supply. The excess is often wasted.
Compromised food quality: Fresh produce often must be picked before it is fully ripe as it will continue to ripen in transit. While this helps prevent some spoilage, it also harms quality.
Reduced shelf life: We’ve all been there — you bring home a bagged salad or some fresh fruit, and you can’t even get through it before it spoils. Fresh foods grown locally have a far longer shelf life because they haven’t spent time in transit.
Food insecurity: Complex and lengthy supply chains benefit the wealthiest nations. But these practices often lead to insecurity in areas that can’t afford to pay for all those food miles. When basic staples become scarce due to crop failure or other factors, the poorest nations are often left in the lurch.
Consumer’s Role in Reducing Food Miles
Of course, there are ways to change these inefficiencies, and many of them start with the consumer. If consumers purchase local foods and eat seasonally, we reduce the food miles of our choices significantly. Here are a few tips for decreasing your food miles:
Shop at your local farmers’ market. Your local farmers market can be a haven for fresh foods. Typically, the produce there is grown in or near your community, not trucked in from the other side of the world.
Eat seasonally. If you crave fresh strawberries in the dead of winter, understand that this choice comes with a high price on the environment. Instead, look for strawberry preserves or frozen berries. Eat fresh foods when they are in season in your area and preserve them for other seasons.
Practice mindful purchasing. Even at a standard grocery store, you can often find locally produced products. Look for labels that tell you where a product comes from and purchase those that have traveled the least. Also, buy single-ingredient products as much as possible, avoiding heavily processed foods where you can.
Inside Eden Green’s Hydroponic Vertical Farm.
Global Trends and the Future of Sustainable Agriculture
Several trends in agriculture are aiming to solve the food miles problem. Here are a few of the more interesting options:
Local Food Hubs connect growers and local consumers, offering food with clear origins and few food miles.
Vertical farms disconnect crops from the ground, instead growing them in stacks of trays or towers. These farms fit into nearly any city because they take far less space than traditional farms. They can also be placed on rooftops or inside buildings. Urban farms feed the communities surrounding them. This minimizes food miles and offers fresh produce in areas that were previously food deserts.
Blockchain technology creates transparency in the supply chain. With this tracking technology, each juicy tomato, head of lettuce, or sprig of thyme can be traced to its origins. This data helps consumers shop locally and avoid paying for food miles.
Farm-to-school programs offer nutritious foods to our nation’s schools without contributing to the food miles problem.
Eden Green’s Innovative Farming Practices
Reducing food miles is just one piece of Eden Green’s sustainability mission. We operate vertical farms in controlled environment greenhouses with plants grown in hydroponic systems. Each piece of this AgTech puzzle allows us to produce fresh, healthy foods with minimal impact. We also seek to offer our foods to local communities, most going to market within 48 hours of harvest. Let’s define some of these terms to pinpoint the type of technology we’re discussing.
Vertical farms, as mentioned above, detach plants from the ground. The plants in these farms can be grown in towers or on racks of trays stacked one on top of the other. This offers the benefit of producing much more food in a far smaller footprint. They can also be placed in areas without fertile soil for growing, such as on rooftops or inside warehouses.
Hydroponics is a way of growing plants without using soil. Instead, plants are anchored into a growing medium with their roots dipping directly into water. The water conveys various nutrients, offering the plants everything they need to thrive and produce delicious foods.
Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) growers control the temperature, humidity, and lighting around their plants. They give plants the exact conditions they need for optimal growth, regardless of the season, climate, or weather outside.
Partnering with Eden Green Technology
If you are a produce buyer for a grocery store or restaurant, we want to hear from you.
Eden Green Technology offers fresh hydroponic produce year-round, regardless of season or weather.
Our private label produce & custom packaging travels less than 300 miles from our facility to your shelves and stockrooms. This means far fewer food miles than is typical in the industry.
We meet exacting standards that put us in the top 1% of food-safe environments and feature daily harvests year-round.
Support sustainable agriculture by partnering with Eden Green Technology. Contact our team today to learn how we can boost your business. We'll help you protect the planet and promote your local community.