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Page added on July 15, 2014
Focusing on Food Miles is a Mistake
In The Energy Basis of Food Security I note how tightly linked food prices are to energy prices, pointing out that the primary reason for this link is that food production is incredibly energy intensive. A series of recent posts have explored the energy intensity of different modes of food transport within food systems, and these have attracted a fair amount of attention. This doesn’t surprise me as many in the local food movement value highly the fuel savings attributed – sometimes falsely – to reducing the number of ‘food miles’ associated with their grocery lists. While I’m all for reducing the energy demands associated with food production, I think the singular attention given to the issue of food miles is misguided, and I’ll use this post to explain why.
In The Energy Cost of Food I articulated how energy is used throughout the US food system [1, 2]. The component of this that equates to the energy cost of ‘food miles’ is quite small; of the 12 calories of industrial energy invested in each edible calorie of food in 2002, only 0.4 calories were used in long-distance food transport, which means the other 11.6 calories were used elsewhere in the food system, such as on farms, in food processing plants, at wholesale and retail food outlets, at restaurants and other food service establishments, and, of course, in people’s homes. In Towards an Energy Standard of ‘Local’ I presented data that suggests that local food transported from a producer directly to a retail outlet such as a farmers’ market can indeed use less fuel per unit food delivered, but as a percentage of the total energy used in food systems these savings are tiny, perhaps even negligible. If we want to make a meaningful dent in overall food systems energy use, we aren’t going to do it just by reducing the amount of energy used to transport food.
Transportation of food, over long distances or short, represents a tiny share of the total energy invested in food production. Far more energy is used on farms, in food processing plants of all sorts, in the wholesale warehouses and retail outlets where food is stored or displayed before sale, and finally within households where consumers refrigerate, freeze, process and cook food after driving to a grocery store, farmers’ market or food service establishment to acquire it. If we really want to make strides in reducing the energy intensity of food, these latter areas are where we’ll find most opportunities for efficiency gains.
On many of the farms I’ve worked on, fuel use associated with machinery and indirect energy use associated with fertilizers, pesticides, animal feeds and other farm inputs make up most of the energy use. Exactly how to reduce these energy inputs while maintaining yields and overall farm viability will vary from farm to farm, but at the farm level this is where attention needs to be focused. As for food processors I’m sure there are efficiency gains to be found within most operations but, at the end of the day, I find myself wondering why we process so much of our food? Controversial as this suggestion will surely be, I think we’d do well to eliminate most commercial food processing and switch to diets of foods as whole and unprocessed as possible. This would take a sizable chunk out of our food system’s energy budget straight up, and would probably leave us healthier. The local food movement, insofar as it pushes direct marketing, could well reduce the energy intensity of food by reducing our reliance on wholesale and retail outlets, which use lots of energy in food storage and displays, although small farms still use some energy to wash, package, refrigerate and freeze certain products. As far as food service establishments go, with the exception of some veritable gourmet outlets that legitimately serve really good food, most restaurants don’t exactly offer healthy fare so cutting our reliance on this sector will also offer benefits besides just energy savings.
Finally, within households, where over a quarter of the energy invested in food is used, consumers actually have direct control over how much energy they use in the service of storing and preparing the foods they buy. Modern refrigerator-freezers, while certainly more efficient than those of 30 years ago, are often the single largest user of electricity in a household unless electricity’s used for heat, and adjusting buying patterns to allow for a smaller unit can pay big dividends. Beyond this, fermentation is an excellent way to preserve vegetables and some fruits and meats without the need for refrigeration or freezing. Cooking can also be fairly energy intensive, with many dishes requiring far more energy input from modern cooking appliances than they deliver in edible food calories.
My goal with this post isn’t necessarily to pull the rug out from beneath the local food movement, but rather to encourage ‘foodies’ to reconsider how their movement can fit within a broader goal of reducing energy use within food systems. Focusing on reducing food miles is a mistake, and to see a meaningful reduction in energy demand throughout the food system will require a far broader approach.
18 Comments on "Focusing on Food Miles is a Mistake"
Makati1 on Tue, 15th Jul 2014 9:32 pm
Reducing energy, and increasing future survival, is started with buying local. Miles do count when those trucks stop rolling, and they will.
GregT on Tue, 15th Jul 2014 10:24 pm
The author is forgetting about the other two Es, the Economy, and the Environment. Energy is not the only hurdle we have to overcome.
Support local food producers now, or they won’t be there in the future when they will be needed the most.
Norm on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 1:53 am
Supporting local food producers is OK, but why miss the point of this article? The poitn is that John Boehner’s wife burns up far more gasoline taking home 1 sack of groceries in the back of the Escalade, than could ever be burned up in a tractor, train, or truck shipping the food. This is why its over-rated to count food miles. Most of the energy goes into the car between the house and the grocery store.
The article is tactfully pointing out an oversimplified view, but it doesn’t look like people are getting it. I get it.
Makati1 on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 6:10 am
How much of the food travels by air? A lot!
“… Today, the
typical American prepared meal contains, on average, ingredients from at least five countries outside the United States…”
http://www.food-hub.org/files/resources/Food%20Miles.pdf
Arthur on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 7:12 am
Talking about food miles, or meters rather… today the first glorious summer day has arrived in Holland and I went into my backyard with a spade to see how the aardappelen=earth apples=potatoes were doing. Answer: fantastic! For 2 lousy euros I had bought ca. 60 seed potatoes and after three months, with zero maintenance, not even weed picking, each and every one of them morphed into a sufficient one person meal; that’s 60 meals=2 months, grown on ca 7 m2. In other words, my garden of 130m2 should produce enough food for 2 persons, around the clock 365/365. That’s encouraging. Solar panels plus heat pump, with garden soil as cold side should make me pretty well prepared for things to come. All it takes is a bicycle tour to the small garden center, 4 miles from here.
Davy on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 7:31 am
Art, don’t you love it. I have been toiling for months on the garden and now my labor is paying off. The quality in the taste is what makes me happy. The economics of the garden are lacking but taste cannot be replicated with cheap store bought food. I have 10000 sq/ft garden. I am adding another 5000 sq/ft in the fall with the planting of 15 peach trees and more garden space. I think that is enough for one person.
This is Prepper Dave Speaking:
Please folks do something in regards to food. A garden is more than food production and good taste it is efforts at the ability to produce food. It takes infrastructure, abilities, and attitudes to feed yourself in times of trouble. Don’t worry about completely feeding yourself just be able to do something. If the lifestyle becomes appealing do allot more but just do something. I also highly recommend long shelf life food for example:
http://www.costco.com/all-emergency-food.html
Another thing along with the above is tools to prep and store food. Folks a little can go a long way with food. Make a difference in your lives. If a crisis hits having some food production and or stored food abilities will allow you to focus on other issues.
Pops on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 7:32 am
I think the article misses the real point of local food, which in my mind should be resilience, not saving energy, and the key to local food resilience is as simple as buying in season. I had this discussion with JohnDenver (peakoildebunked) way back.
First, transporting beans and corn meal from the plains to the mountain cabin is much less energy intensive that flying a January tomato in from Peru or eating feedlot beef so looking at “food” as monolithic is simply wrong. Basic calorie commodities are most efficiently grown at large scale and though they are just as regionally specialized (i.e. the Corn Belt) the calorie content makes the transport expense negligible at this fuel price – and probably at much higher prices. It has been the same for a long time, long before ICEs and FFs in fact.
The love apple on the other hand is the perfect example of the Tyranny of the Consumer that has destroyed local food resilience. My version of the old saw is “The customer may not always be right – but he’s always the customer.” What that boils down to is growers have followed the customers direction and developed perfectly round red globes without a mark or wrinkle that never overripen (the fact is they never ripen) so don’t taste anything like a tomato – or anything else for that matter. Tasting is not part of the buying process though, is it? But most importantly, they are made available 365 days a year at such a low price the small local grower might not be able to compete.
Tomatoes are not diet staples though. Protein is and whether it is feedlot beef or feed-pond fish (more farm raised fish are consumed now that beef) it is all about feed cost. Feeding concentrates is cheaper and provides faster weight gain (and fat, which is the basis of grading) than grass, it’s just that simple. If grass finishing were cheaper we’d never have switched to grain back in the ’60s. The Green Revolution (genetics, fertilizer & irrigation) that increased grain yields was supposed to have fed the world but what it did was make rich people fatter – the poor still starve. So to increase cost efficiency, dairies, feedlots, hog farms and packing houses moved to where the grain is so it’s not likely anyone raises protein in your area.
The point of “local” and in fact the point of any action regarding energy efficiency and “conservation” is to make you and your area more resilient, not to “save energy.” It’s basic, the more you “conserve”, the cheaper energy is for everyone else, so the more they are able to use – saving nothing in total.
Local food is a basic survival strategy and buying in season favors your local grower. The same as supporting the local hardware store, if you keep that guy alive, he isn’t liable to close down with the next dip in sales and leave you stranded without a spare nail.
alokin on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 7:43 am
I have my doubts with the figures above. What was factored in what was left out? The transport of the cardboard box to the farmer? The waste which comes with packaging? Driving to the supermarket? Maybe you take the bike or drive anyway because you have to do something in town. Or the energy the fertilizer needs. Numbers like that are always a hit and miss.
Davy on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 8:15 am
Pop’s I agree with your summation and add a preppers point. It is not about energy efficiency, sustainability, and resilience so much now. What is important is the seed planted for when these important variables are really vital and that is soon. The economics are not there at the moment and why swim upstream when the economics will benefit you to eat industrial AG currently. Yet, we know from our discussions here we are probably on a descent of some kind. I call it an energy and complexity descent. This will involve systematic disequilibrium and dysfunctions to our locals and our normal. This paradigm change is not in our face yet. It is more like a slow frog boil. We are not feeling the heat because we are not being seared like a piece of beef on the grill. We need to have some infrastructure, technology, and knowledge in place to fire up these local food efforts. We have to have local food to compensate for the unwinding of the industrial global food system. Industrial AG will not maintain what we see today. With the food productions stresses, water stresses, and economic stresses in the pipeline we are going to see some food insecurity soon. This is going to further develop into hunger and regional famine in the third world. If we have some local food abilities we have resilience in the face of food instability. Nothing is more dangerous to a complex society than food insecurity. When we have food shortages it disrupts normal activity as people will scramble to satisfy their food needs first. Energy is secondary to food. Of course energy and food are related and both essential but we have immediate issues without food. Energy is a longer term issue. Water is likewise a serious issue but normally we can obtain enough water to survive in the short term. It is the longer term where water stress will cripple an economy. So folks get a garden, eat something locally, and try to eat seasonally. When your local is more resilient and sustainable you are just a little bit further from needing a global tit to suck on.
Arthur on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 8:40 am
Well Davy, to be honoust, the potatoes were the only ones that succeeded, no such luck with beets, onions and cabbage. Reason probably: poor sandy soil and no real dung. I am probably going to mimic Kunstler and have thus installed:
http://kunstler.com/my-garden/the-garden-second-year-2013/
I saw that 1 m3 garden soil costs 30 euro, including transport, so that is a job for the upcoming autumn.
High on the wishlist is a super efficient freezer, that can keep food cold for a week without electricity and will eat only 180 kwh/year from the 2000 kwh solar panel electricity budget. Btw I did an electricity consumption audit of my household and computers, monitors and wifi consume the most, with tv second. The rest: fridge, light, washing machine can be negected.
JuanP on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 9:37 am
Art, I use the Square Foot Gardening system to grow food in a 4′ by 8′ space I have access to, but don’t own. I have been growing food for 39 years, since I was six, but have never owned land. When there is a will, there is a way!
Building up six inches of top soil with peat or coir, vermiculite, and a compost mix works great in small areas. It is important to mix different kinds of compost to get the best results. My garden is a jungle right now in the Florida summer. I can grow food year round here.
Davy on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 10:17 am
Art, Rome was not built in a day. I agree for your situation a raised bed system is a great idea. I am also looking to get a supper efficient frig to run with my solar system. I currently have a Sunfrost frig at my house in Hermann. This is a very good brand in the states for efficiency a little pricy though. Keep up the good work I know you will succeed.
Juan, hell I got some weeds too. I generally keep the weeds to a minimum until the plants get established then I cut back my weed efforts. I have mowed grass strips between rows for walking down and erosion control then next to the plants along the rows a keep a tilled strip to help water filtration into the soil and keep weeds down. The system is working great. My garden is on a slight incline so I have to manage erosion. The slight incline is beneficial in keeping the soil drained. Too much moisture is always an issue.
JuanP on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 11:00 am
Davy, I meant a jungle in a good way, wildly growing food and herbs. I don’t have enough space to grow bad weeds, I pick them out weekly.
Davy on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 11:08 am
I wish all mine were good. My melons, pumpkins, and zucchini are getting grown up with weeds but I have so many I do not worry. This is one thing I have going for me with so much planted I can loose plants and still have plenty of produce. I have a pretty good handle on the other weeds.
Pops on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 11:47 am
I’ve been thinking about a newer better fridge too. Would any of you mind reporting in on your findings?
There is a thread of course…
http://peakoil.com/forums/does-anyone-sell-super-efficient-chest-refrigerators-t43046.html?hilit=refrigerator
JuanP on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 11:49 am
Davy, I have very litlle space, so my planting is very dense. I have Oregano on the sides on top of carrots underground with peppers overhead in one square foot, no space for weeds and very little weeding. On the square foot next to that one, I’m growing potatoes, parsley, and tomatoes. And so on, every square foot is layered and exploited to the max. On the areas where I grow tubers and such The soil is one foot deep, the rest just six inches. It works well, a very efficient system. I also have a compost bin. The way I learned to grow food as a child was less scientific, things have changed, as well as my circumstances.
JuanP on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 11:54 am
Pops, I’ve heard good things about the Sunfrost and Sundanzer units for years, as I’m sure you have, but there may be newer options out there.
Davy on Wed, 16th Jul 2014 4:27 pm
Pops, my Sunfrost was a happy purchase. I spent more but it shows. Very quiet and because there are two separate compressors the frig part has good humidity that keeps food longer