The Cost of Shipping food

In todays world it has become normal to have any food available to you at any time of the year. Most of this food is not locally produced. The food comes from around the world to the shelves of your local supermarket. The cost of shipping oranges from Florida, Cod from Norway and lemons from Argentina is horrendous. The amount of greenhouse gasses that are blasted into the atmosphere transporting food is unacceptable and if we keep at it soon there will not be much left of our precious home. We have to learn to produce and eat our local food even if that means not every kind of food is always available to us at all times.

            Sure it is convenient to always be able to eat what you want, but what is the cost? Until recently, it was cheaper to grow and sell food locally because resources such as overnight shipping from one end of the earth to the other were not an option. Now, with globalization at its peak, it is cheaper to pay laborers in poor countries sometimes as little as a penny a day to grow food and then ship it half way around the world to sell it to the rich countries. If we grew and sold our food locally we could boost our economy by providing jobs for a lot of people on farms and drastically cut back on our impact on the environment because there would be no need for everything to be shipped long distance.

            It is ironic, that California, which exports a lot of food, also imports so much of it. In 2005 more then three million tons of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and wine were imported from places like Australia, the Netherlands and New Zealand. All of this food came through ports like Oakland. In fact, these ports experience so much traffic that higher pollution levels have been noticed in their vicinity. The results are an increase in health problems like asthma. The highly increased levels of diesel soot in the air cause the effects. The amount of Diesel fumes that are produced by these ports can be so great that the health risks involved with living near one of these giant ports are unacceptable. The California Air Resources Board estimated that in 2005, 2,400 early deaths and 2,800 hospitalizations for asthma and other diseases were sourced to exposure to diesel pollution from freight transport activities within California. Approximately 950 cases of asthma, 16,870 missed schools days, 43 hospital admissions, and 37 premature deaths could be linked to the worsened air quality from food imports in 2005. (Food Hub).

            However, there are exceptions to our shipping fiasco. Sometimes it may actually be less harmful to grow certain products like rare exotic flowers in tropical locations and then ship them, rather then growing them in power hungry greenhouses that suck horrendous amounts of power to produce light and heat every day. The cost of keeping a greenhouse lit and heated for the entire duration of the life of a plant is much more costly in terms of pollution then it is to let the flower grow naturally and then send it to where it is wanted. (Elizabeth Rosenthal). The question is: do we really need things like tropical flowers in our house when there are flowers that could be grown locally? We’ve made it through our entire history without them, so I think we would be just fine without them. But aside from these few and rare exceptions the impact of shipping greatly outweighs the cost of growing locally. The amount of greenhouse gases that could be saved from going into the atmosphere by cutting down on shipping is huge, and if it were less, our planet would greatly appreciate it.

            The European union recently raised their tax on imported food by twenty percent in order to encourage more domestic food production. I believe this is a step in the right direction, if imported food weren’t so cheap everywhere, people would be less inclined to buy it. Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain has started printing a chart on their products assessing the carbon footprint of an item. “This may be as radical for environmental consuming as putting a calorie count on the side of packages to help people who want to lose weight,” said Trevor Datson, spokesperson for Tesco (Elisabeth Rosenthal). I feel that it is logical to at least inform the buyer of the origin and the cost of the product that they are about to buy. Maybe, if the customer had more to base their product choice on then just the taste and price, they would be more inclined to buy an apple grown locally, rather then an apple grown somewhere in Asia that may cost twenty cents less.  

            The issue is not simply black and white however.  The impact also depends on the manner in which the food was transported, not only how far. Trains are ten times more efficient at moving food than trucks are. You could either purchase potatoes that were transported on a truck for 100 miles, or potatoes transported on train for 1,000 miles (DeWeerdt, S). The greenhouse gas emissions that resulted from these two alternatives would be about equal. Planes are by far the most inefficient way to ship food, followed by trucks then trains. Boats are the most environmentally friendly shipping solution, however they are not even close to efficient enough to be sustainable and the oil spills that are an associated risk are extremely harmful to our environment.

            The carbon footprint of food also depends on how it is grown. Swedish researcher Annika Carlsson-Kanyama led a study that found it may better, from a environmentalist perspective, for Swedish people to buy Spanish tomatoes then Swedish tomatoes, because the Spanish tomatoes were grown outside under the sun compared to the local ones which were grown in greenhouses that rely on fossil-fuels for their sun and heat energy (DeWeerdt, S.). This is the reason why, along with not shipping food, we need to accept that we won’t have access to every type of food all year long. Most foods do not grow all year long in the same place, and greenhouses are not efficient enough to be a sensible solution. People need to understand that their environment is more important then the latest craving that finds it’s way into ones’ head.

The cost of shipping food is too high, and there needs to be a change. We need to release less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the course of our daily lives. A great place to start would be to change how we go about food supply. People are already taking steps in the right direction, but we need to double up on our efforts or else, when we run out of gas, we’ll run out of food and that day may be sooner then we think.

           

Works Cited

DeWeerdt, S.. "Is local food better?." Worldwatch institute. Worldwatch Instirute, 2011. Web. 9 May 2012. <http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064>.

Elisabeth, Rosenthal. "Environmental cost of Shipping."New York Times. Times, n.d. Web. 9 May 2012.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/business/worldbusiness/26food.html?pagewanted=all>

"Food miles: How far your food travels has serious consequences for your health and the climate."food hub. National Resource Defense Council, 2007. Web. 9 May 2012. <http://food-hub.org/files/resources/Food Miles.pdf>.