Andrew Sullivan believes that Ronald Bailey has exposed a food miles farce, but you can’t compare bananas to apples without considering the reality of unsustainable consumption and the unsustainability of industrial agriculture.

Bailey argues that using food miles—the distance food travels to get to your plate—as a factor for sustainability isn’t realistic. He gives several examples in an attempt to discredit the food miles argument, but these examples aren’t strong enough to discredit the argument. For example, he cited a study that found the “cold storage of British apples produced more carbon dioxide than shipping New Zealand apples by sea to London.” However in many parts of the world like Michigan, it is certainly unsustainable to purchase apples from a Michigan supermarket that came from New Zealand when locally grown organic Michigan apples can be purchased in a local Michigan farmer’s market. Furthermore, the energy or fuel used to transport New Zealand apples to Michigan is very high.

I understand what Bailey is trying to argue, but he isn’t considering all the factors. For example, he argues “It is possible to grow bananas in Iceland, but Costa Rica really has the better climate for that activity.” Certainly, bananas should be purchased and transported from the best place possible, but there are other factors in addition to climate or suitability that should be taken into consideration when determining the best place possible such as distance, infrastructure used to produce the food, fuel costs, in addition to the impact on the local environment and markets.

I don’t believe consumers shopping locally in Michigan expect to buy bananas grown in Michigan, but if the closest and best place is Costa Rica, then Costa Rica is reasonable. On the other hand, I believe that some consumers have a problem with purchasing apples from New Zealand or blueberries from Chile, when the same produce can be purchased locally.  To my knowledge, New Zealand apples don’t offer anything substantially different than apples grown in the United States, so purchasing apples grown in New Zealand seems silly or unreasonable.  Furthermore, if consumers known as locavores decide to purchase produce from within a 50- or 100-miles radius, then that’s their choice, and their choice saves a lot of energy.

Ultimately, I believe Bailey’s assessment is lacking because it seeks to discredit the food miles argument when the food miles factor is still a very important factor in determining sustainability. He says, “Food miles advocates fail to grasp the simple idea that food should be grown where it is most economically advantageous to do so,” but he fails to take into consideration rising fuel consumption and rising fuel prices. More than ever, it is important to conserve resources where possible. Furthermore, climate change policy is seeking to cut out unnecessary carbon where it exists.

Personally, I believe the consumer has a moral responsibility to purchase food packaged in materials that can be recycled or food that can be locally or organically grown in order to force industry to make more sustainable decisions. Of course, not all people have the luxury of making sustainable decisions because they may not have the knowledge or resources to do so, but many Americans are in the position to make better choices to some degree, and there are several ways to contribute to sustainability. For example, you can: (1) focus on purchasing produce grown within a 100-mile radius, (2) commit to purchasing a portion of your food from a local farmer’s market during the summer, (3) make a good faith attempt to purchase sustainable seafood, (4) commit to some type of vegetarianism, or (5) purchase food that comes in reduced and recyclable packaging. I agree with Marc at In One Ear… Out the Other:

Yet despite the versatility of such crops, we still rely on far away industrialized agriculture to provide most of our diet, and the reason is that the historically low price of fuel has allowed us to concentrate and specialize our agriculture to certain regions. Most of our cereals in this country are produced in the plains states, our vegetables in California and poultry and pork to the South, and those products are then shipped across the country from those locations because of the benefit of cheap fuel. The system reinforces itself too, cheap Plains states cereals are shipped to the South to feed chickens. Guano is collected from Southern chicken farms and used for fertilizers out West, and etc.. The system works and works well, economically speaking, to the extent that we have cheap fuels for transportation.

Cheap fuels, however, are not likely to continue to be a reality. Grains grown in South Dakota fall at the same latitude and growing season as grains to be grown in New York, yet most New Yorkers still rely on Western grains. To drive through Western New York and it becomes immediately evident that those crops can and are grown successfully there; there are fields and fields of corn, yet hardly any are intended for human consumption. The majority is “field corn” or corn grown to supplement cow feed for local dairy production. However, besides for the economics of cheap fuel, there is no real reason not to diversify.

So while carbon emissions from food transport may represent a small part of overall emissions, its important to the extent that its an unsustainable and soon to be economically irrelevant portion. Also, when we’re talking about reducing carbon emissions globally by a certain date by 10%, 20%, 40% – that 1% becomes all the more significant.

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