Food trade plays a key role in achieving global food security. With a growing consumer demand for diverse food products, transportation has emerged as a key link in food supply chains. We estimate the carbon footprint of food-miles by using a global multi-region accounting framework. We calculate food-miles based on the countries and sectors of origin and the destination countries, and distinguish the relevant international and domestic transport distances and commodity masses. When the entire upstream food supply chain is considered, global food-miles correspond to about 3.0 GtCO2e (3.5–7.5 times higher than previously estimated), indicating that transport accounts for about 19% of total food-system emissions (stemming from transport, production and land-use change). Global freight transport associated with vegetable and fruit consumption contributes 36% of food-miles emissions—almost twice the amount of greenhouse gases released during their production. To mitigate the environmental impact of food, a shift towards plant-based foods must be coupled with more locally produced items, mainly in affluent countries.
Fruit and veggies are officially treats :doomer:
you can't generalize this across all food because some areas are so much more suited for various kinds of agriculture that it's "worth" the transit emissions shipping stuff to places that would otherwise be less efficiently doing local production.
i can't be bothered to look for it but i remember seeing something about new zealand is so much better for herding sheep that it was better to ship mutton from there to wales than whatever feed and fertilizer wales needs to use.
Fortunately it is very easy, compared to other things, to imagine an existence where a plurality of our nutrition comes from seasonal, preserved, or otherwise local fruits and vegetables.
i fucking WISH mayo agrimonoculture would actually grow local fruits and vegg, why the fuck am i buying berries from mexico i can harvest in my backyard? why the fuck are indigenous staples suited for the environment shunned for fuckin wheat & corn?
(we all know why it rhymes with yaybor costs and crapitalisme)
Fruit and veggies are officially treats.
That's bad, they contain vital nutrients that our bodies can't necessarily synthesize on their own from other sources.
This (old) article says the opposite, I don't know if they used a different method of counting emissions or if their data is just wrong
Global freight transport associated with vegetable and fruit consumption contributes 36% of food-miles emissions
i'm interested in the breakdown of the other 64%. Grains, beans, and nuts should be relatively small because they don't need refrigeration, so the only things left are meat, dairy, eggs, and prepared foods.
Grains would be absolutely enormous due to maritime shipping though. Prolly rare growth (coffee/cacao beans) and grain for countries which don’t grow their own food due to this accounts for lots
Grains and cooking oil would be huge, because of capitalist inefficientcy no one eats the food they grow in their own country and juggles around various stuff though imports and exports, see Ukraine wheat and sunflower oil crisis
