Your Food Travels More Than You
In the UK, over half of the food and feed are imported, and some products like apples may have travelled over 10,000 miles to get to our supermarkets.
But why buy apples from the USA when British apples are among the finest? One reason is that it is sometimes cheaper to buy or process a product in the other side of the world and ship it back than to buy it local, due to lower labour costs and cheap transport. Moreover, we want seasonal food all year round, so it has to come from somewhere else. And last, processed food requires multiple ingredients, which must be shipped together to be processed, and then re-distributed.
Moving products around the world is a problem, as ships, planes and trucks contribute a great deal of GHG emissions. Buying local is more efficient, and additionally supports local markets. Yet, the C footprint of food transportation remains significantly less important than that of their production, and in some exceptional cases, imported food can be less C intensive than local one if the means of production is more polluting locally.
Buying local remains nevertheless less polluting, in general, as most food is imported because it is cheaper abroad, not because it is produced more sustainably. Here's a way to buy local produce in Europe.
Diego Garcia-Vega - January 6th 2018