Food mile facts

Put simply, 'food miles' is a measure of how far food travels – from paddock to plate – and is an indication of how environmentally-friendly it is. Food freight – especially by air and road – consumes fuel and energy, and releases greenhouse pollution, affecting the global climate.

Generally speaking, the lower the food miles the better choice the product is for the environment.

Measuring the full environmental impacts of food production, transportation, sale and consumption can be a complex task. However, overseas studies reveal some sobering facts about the hidden environmental costs of imported food.

  • The energy consumed in food freight often outweighs the nutritional energy in the food itself. For instance, it takes around 1,000 kilojoules of energy to ship 170kJ worth of strawberries from Chile to the United States.
  • A recent German study found that a 240ml cup of yoghurt in a supermarket shelf in Berlin entails over 9,000km of transportation. (Germans eat three billion cups a year.)
  • In the United States, the food for a typical meal has travelled nearly 2,100km, but if that meal contains off-season fruits or vegetables the total distance is many times higher.
  • Even imported organic food can have a tremendous impact. A single Briton's shopping basket of 26 imported organic products could have travelled 241,000km and released as much CO2 into the atmosphere as an average four bedroom household does through cooking meals over eight months.
For information on Victoria, see the report "Food Miles in Australia: A Preliminary study of Melbourne, Victoria” that estimates the distances travelled for food items found in a typical Melburnian's shopping basket and the resulting greenhouse emissions from this transportation.

References:

Clay, J. 2004. World Agriculture and the Environment, Island Press, Washington DC.

Jones, A. 2001. Eating Oil: Food Supply in a Changing Climate. A Sustain/Elm Farm Research Centre Report, United Kingdom.

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