[Biofuel] Food Miles
I was innocently listening to NPR this afternoon, when lo and behold, they had a feature on food miles! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5618390 Any story on NPR that even MENTIONS food miles illustrates that there IS hope! robert luis rabello "The Edge of Justice" Adventure for Your Mind http://www.newadventure.ca Ranger Supercharger Project Page http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Food Miles and Sustainability
The Institute of Science in Society Science Society Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk This article can be found on the I-SIS website at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FMAS.phphttp://www.i- sis.org.uk/FMAS.php ISIS Press Release 21/09/05 Food Miles and Sustainability What's behind the statistics and what should be done? mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Rhea Gala http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/FMASFull.phpSources for this article are posted on ISIS members website. Details http://www.i- sis.org.uk/membership.phphere Food miles an indicator of sustainability Food transported across the world burns up a lot of fossil fuel and contributes to global warming. Food miles - the total distance in miles the food item is transported from field to plate - has become accepted as a convenient indicator of sustainability; and has led to a general movement towards local production and local consumption in order to minimize them. This raises fundamental questions about the sustainability of the globalised food trade and the increasing concentration of the food supply chain and distribution in the hands of fewer and fewer transnational corporations. UK's Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has commissioned a report to look into The Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator of Sustainable Development, which was published in July 2005. The company commissioned to do the report was AEA Technology, formerly part of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and now a private sector company that was floated on the London stock exchange in 1996. Given the narrow remit of the report, it nevertheless came up with some damning evidence against the dominant food system. The question is whether the political will is there to move forward from the discredited model. Causes for the increase of food miles correctly identified The report correctly identified the five most striking changes in the UK food production and supply chain in the last fifty years that have greatly increased food transport. Globalisation of the food industry with increased imports and exports and ever wider sourcing of food within the UK and abroad Concentration of the food supply base into fewer, larger suppliers, partly to meet demand for bulk year-round supplies of uniform produce Major changes in delivery patterns with most goods now routed through supermarket regional distribution centres using larger HGVs (heavy goods vehicles) Centralised and concentrated sales in supermarkets where a weekly shop by car has replaced frequent pedestrian shop visits These trends all add to food miles. Since 1978, the annual amount of food moved by HGVs in the UK has increased by 23 percent with the average distance for each trip also up by 50 percent. The report stated, The rise in food miles has led to increases in the environmental, social and economic burdens associated with transport. These include carbon dioxide emissions, air pollution, congestion, accidents and noise. There is a clear cause and effect relationship for food miles for these burdens and in general higher levels of vehicle activity lead to larger impacts. It was against this background that DEFRA commissioned the study. Scope of the report limited The study was meant to: Compile a food miles dataset covering the supply chain from farmer (both in the UK and abroad) to the consumer in 1992, 1997 and 2002. Assess the main trends leading to the increase in food miles at home and abroad Identify and quantify the environmental, economic and social impacts of food miles Develop a set of indicators which relate food miles to their main impacts on sustainability These tasks are narrowly based and treat transport in isolation from the rest of the food cycle. The energy-intensive globalised industrial model that is accepted as given, and indeed actively promoted by the government and the food and drinks industry, inevitably entails a massive food transport system. A more holistic and useful remit for the study would have been one that looked at the energy demands of the whole industrial farming and food model, including its specialized transport needs against those of a localised organic, energy conscious model that prioritises energy conservation and minimizes waste (see Sustainable Food Systems for Sustainable Development http://www.i- sis.org.uk/isisnews.phpSiShttp://www.i- sis.org.uk/isisnews.php27). This would have sharpened the focus on the costs/benefits of the two food strategies and allowed the government to choose more rationally the one that is in the interests of the people and the environment that it currently only pays lip service to. The study finds, unsurprisingly, that a single indicator based on total food miles is inadequate. That's because some miles such as air miles cost more in energy and carbon dioxide emissions; and others, such as HGV miles, cost more in
Re: [Biofuel] Food Miles and Sustainability
Keith Addison wrote: Food Miles and Sustainability I know we've talked about this before. Some food items that I consume regularly (like tea, for instance) come from halfway around the world. I don't think we'll eliminate food miles completely, but buying locally and growing your own goes a long way toward mitigating the problem. We harvested a bunch of potatoes from our garden last week. They were the most flavorful I can recall eating (and I'm not a potato fan, having grown up on brown rice), but we have SO many there is simply no way we can eat them all. (This has been generally true of our garden this year. Our deep freeze is PACKED FULL of produce, and we're not done harvesting yet! Friends and neighbors are teasing me about opening a produce stand. . . ) Our beets are deeply delicious. Carrots and strawberries, dark and sweet, are still growing even though the weather has begun getting cool. We've had decent corn, too. (A big surprise, as last year the plants never grew taller than the length of my elbow to finger tips!) Purple beans, onions, squash, peas and currants were all very abundant. The pumpkins didn't grow as big, but we've had a lot less rain than we did last year. Only my fruit trees, save the beloved apple, have disappointed me. All of this cost me some sweat, (which, at my age, doesn't hurt . . . ) the price of the seed and the value of some metered water I put on the garden during the hot part of the summer. Heavy loads of compost and decomposed barn litter were the only other things I added to the soil. Less time in front of the television allows ample time for the plants. It's a family activity that keeps us bonded close together, reminds us of our link to the earth, and helps in a small way to solve a host of environmental problems. Be subversive! Grow some vegetables! robert luis rabello The Edge of Justice Adventure for Your Mind http://www.newadventure.ca Ranger Supercharger Project Page http://www.members.shaw.ca/rabello/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[biofuel] Food Miles
http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/papers.htm Leopold Center June 2004 Food Miles: A simple metaphor to contrast local and global food systems This article was written for the Summer 2004 newsletter of the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition (HEN) Dietetic Practice Group of the American Dietetic Association http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/files/local_foods_HEN0604.pdf http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/ppp/index.htm Leopold Center Food, Fuel, and Freeways: An Iowa perspective on how far food travels, fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions A report for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture written by Rich Pirog, marketing and food systems program leader, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Timothy Van Pelt, student, Iowa State Agriculture Biosystems Engineering Kamyar Enshayan, adjunct assistant professor, University of Northern Iowa Ellen Cook, summer intern, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture June 2001 Executive summary http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/ppp/summary.htm HTML format http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/ppp/foodmiles.htm PDF format http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/ppp/food_mil.pdf Graphic, How far do your fruit and vegetables travel? http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/ppp/produce_chart.html Table, Weighted average source distance estimates for produce http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/ppp/producetable.html Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ~-- Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free! http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/FGYolB/TM ~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://infoarchive.net/sgroup/biofuel/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuel/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
[biofuel] Food miles - was Re: USA Today Article Claims: Driver habits steadfast unless gas sticks at $3 a gallon
Hello Mark Hi all, I'd like to point out that a big downside of Euro priced fuel in the US is the asinine tendency to produce goods in one part of the Country (World) and then TRANSHIP all across the country. I posted a Guardian article a while back about a British company that ships IIRC strawberries grown in Britain to Kenya to have them prettily packaged, then to be flown back to Britain for sale. We quite often rant about the food miles issue here, it's rather relevant, rather comparable to the similarly asinine centralized power supply as opposed to localized, micro-niche, biofuels production. IMO organic food is LOCAL food. I don't care how it's grown, but an organic banana grown in Mexico and sold in Tokyo is not organic. Fuel is an interesting component of freight costs in the distribution network. As fuel costs rise, so do consumer goods costs and that hurts the less economically advantaged disproportionally. Yes it does. And they're getting hurt anyway in the food stakes, all the way from simply not enough for about 33 million Americans, to being too poor to afford anything but the cheapest, most toxic junk food, no matter how much they might know better. Lots about this in the archives too. The fact remains that the fuel/energy cost/price in the US is severely distorted, for very bad reasons; obviously the entire economy is distorted as a result. You can't fix one without the other. Fuel prices will most certainly have to be fixed - WILL be fixed, no matter who doesn't like it. It's happening now. We've been discussing it here for years. Since it's all rigged from on-high for the benefit of the powers-that-be and sod the rest, said powers-that-be are all too likely to be far too concerned about their own suffering (about time!) bottom-lines to care much of a damn about the plight of the mere peasantry/cannon fodder/production units/consumer units. Cynical? Not me, but they sure are. My company manufactures Organic Vegetarian Foods on the West Coast of Calif. Fully 5-6% of our annual budget costs go to truck freight to distribution. If the price of Diesel (Dino) doubles (taxes, price manipulation, etc) the price of our products has to rise. Unfortunately, due to brokers in the middle, this wholesale price rise of 5-6% gets whacked again by the distributors who mark up on a straight % basis of delivered price. Suddenly, our affordable, vegetarian, organic food becomes very unaffordable to the people that need and want it the most. The parasitic drag of the brokerage mark up also becomes unbearable. eg. Our delivered price goes up 6% the broker adds their mark up (30%) on top of the DELIVERED price. Fuel goes up, the broker makes more $$$ for sitting on their butts. Short of producing on both coasts, (duplication of everything in the system, loss of economies of scale, etc,) How do we get good, healthy food to those that want/need it? I wrote this previously: How much fossil-energy, in fuel, fertilizers and pesticides, would be required to produce enough food to feed 900 million people? Answer: none. According to the FAO, no less. More than 15% of the world's food supply is produced by city farms (in 1993, expected to grow to 33% by 2005), with virtually no inputs other than wastes (thus vastly decreasing city sanitation problems as well), and with the use of no farming land at all. Quite easy to apply such an approach to biofuels production. [more] http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?view=1395list=BIOFUELS-BIZ How much fuel can we grow? The same situation applies to fresh produce, even more so. If biodiesel were an option, It is an option, and rather more than that. how long before the same Bastards got control of the sales and distribution? And charged accordingly? We've been discussing this for a long time too. I have a niggling feeling that 10 years from now, the environmentalists will be fighting the ethanol industry tooth and nail. anything can be done badly, and I expect the ADM's of the world will be successful in turning a clean renewable resource into a dirty unsustainable one.. - Steve Spence. And so on. Do a search here for Noyes (Graham Noyes of World Energy) and read the whole thread: http://archive.nnytech.net/index.php?list=biofuel They're the Big Guys, the NBB is backed by the Soy Councils, which comprise mainly or very largely ADM, Cargill, Monsanto - pretty much the same bastards, or the same sort of bastards at the very least. See what happened to Graham (who's now World Energy's sales VP, by the way) - he changed his tune more than somewhat, and his subsequent attitude and indeed behaviour has changed too. We're not too concerned. It's too late to stop us. Ed Beggs posted an article a while back about ADM moving into biodiesel production in the US and warned that we'd all be bulldozed, here come the big guys. So what, quite frankly. I'm all for localized production where possible, Where is local production
[biofuel] Food miles madness
Interesting article: For £2.99 in Marks and Spencer, you could until recently buy an elegantly small plastic tray of baby vegetables, each tiny bundle of asparagus shoots, tender greens, miniature corn, dwarf carrots, and premature leeks, tied together with a single chive. The chives were first flown out from England to Kenya. The plastic trays and packaging were flown out too. There African women worked day and night in refrigerated packing sheds next to Nairobi airport, turning the green stems into decorative ribbons around topped and tailed Kenyan produce. Then they were cling-wrapped, and air-freighted back to England again, a round trip of 8,500 miles. [more] http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/focus/story/0,13296,956536,00.html Growers' market Felicity Lawrence heads to Kenya to find out who wins and who loses as hundreds of tonnes of fresh vegetables are cut and packed each day to be flown to UK supermarkets Saturday May 17, 2003 The Guardian Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -~-- Get A Free Psychic Reading! Your Online Answer To Life's Important Questions. http://us.click.yahoo.com/Lj3uPC/Me7FAA/uetFAA/FGYolB/TM -~- Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
