The food miles debate highlights a clash between differing sustainable development agendas. From an environmental perspective, encouraging consumers to alter their purchasing patterns and limiting transportation emissions can only be a good thing. However, from an economic development point of view, food miles labeling can damage important industries in poor countries.
Many development oriented organizations argue that public concerns over food miles could have serious consequences for poorer nations. In a number of countries, including Burundi, Ghana, Malawi, Nicaragua and Panama, food exports make up more than 75% of their overall merchandise exports.
Ironically, the per capita emissions of some of the nations most dependent on food trade are the lowest in the world. Some food miles critics describe this disparity using the notion of 'equitable ecological space': in order to sustain the planet and avoid climate change, the sustainable annual level of carbon emissions for each person in the world is 1.8 tonnes per capita. Whilst many countries such as the United States and United Kingdom at 19.84 and 9.19 tonnes per capita respectively have far exceeded their 'quota' the same is not true of most developing countries. Agriculturally-dependent Nicaragua (0.81 tonnes) and Ghana (0.31 tonnes) fall well within their ecological space. This raises the question of whether it is right to essentially penalize the countries which have contributed least to the problem. Or, to take this one step further, who is "responsible" for these emissions –the countries who export, or the countries who import?
Benito Muller, director of the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has also questioned whether environmental motivations are truly behind the push for food miles labeling. He suggests that the agenda of some supermarkets is to replace overseas food imports with local produce irrespective of the relative environmental impacts. He also raises the point that such policies of 'food patriotism', when displayed by the government, conflict directly with the World Trade Organization’s anti-protectionism rules.
Even from a purely environmental standpoint using food miles as a proxy for measuring the overall footprint of the food system is highly flawed. Simply measuring the distance between consumers and producers provides a narrow picture of the true environmental impacts making a full life cycle analysis crucial. Researchers at the Carnegie Mellon University found that on average only 4% of total emissions occur in the delivery stage and that the type of food plays a significant role in this percentage. Whilst for fruit and vegetables final delivery accounts for 11% of total greenhouse gas emissions this stage is far less important in meat, making up only 1%.
This raises the question of where exactly food labelers and consumers should set boundaries and which externalities to take into account when assessing the climate footprint of our groceries. A more thorough life-cycle emissions analysis could include the following:
Transportation measurements that include all the distances involved in production and distribution, as well as final food delivery (one item is often harvested in one location, processed in another, packaged elsewhere before being sent to a regional distribution center and finally a retail store);
Allowances for different means of transportation and fuels;
Emissions associated with packaging, storage procedures, harvesting techniques and water usage;
Different emissions factors based on methods of cultivation. For instance, the UK Department for International Development have found that ‘the emissions produced by growing flowers in Kenya and flying them to the UK can be less than a fifth of those grown in heated and lighted greenhouses in Holland’;
An analysis which includes all greenhouse gases. Most studies incorporate only the carbon emissions associated with particular foods, but other greenhouse gases with varying global warming potentials also play a key role;
No clear consensus has yet emerged from this debate. Any workable solution, however, will need to include information beyond the limited metric of “food miles” and effectively balance economic development priorities with an environmental agenda.
Source: Earth Trends - World Resource Institute