Food Miles

How does the food you eat affect the natural and man-made environment around you? What are your suggestions for food reduction of food miles and a better environment when it comes to buying food?

For us, food is a necessity that we take for granted every day. Our city's food supply isn't affected by geography or climate anymore. No one ever wonders about the origin of the food in the supermarket or restaurants. How many miles it flew, how many animals or plants it killed, who's health it ruined and how many greenhouse gases it released in our already severely polluted atmosphere. And after all the trouble it causes, people are still starving? Something is clearly wrong in this cycle. In one year, 19 million hectares of rain-forest were lost in order to produce arable land. If we follow this pattern, soon enough people will be regarding jungles as a past part of history. But there are only so many crops you can grow. And most people of this earth are carnivores and consume dairy; obviously, the animals need to be fed as well, which impacts the amount of crops grown majorly. While people starve in Africa, in the US half of the food bought is thrown away. More and more people appear, and cities enlarge, and food is needed. The population of the world increased drastically. At what point will we realize this situation is out of control.

Because we expect bananas and watermelons in winter, in a area such as the Balkans, food started being transported. By trucks, ships or planes, from cities, countries and continents, traveling food miles. Food miles is the distance food travels from where it’s grown to where it’s consumed.  Not only we have such expectations, but we also want it immediately, and the fastest way of transportation is a plane. The plane that was proven to kill a polar bear every flight and is the most pollutant way of traveling. Everything we do from growing to cooking our food impacts our world. The article we have read focused on California and its food miles statistics. It proved that if it didn't import the top 6 purchased products and grew them in the state itself (which was proven possible.) it would reduce the air pollution by 45 times and global warming by 500. So why would anyone keep importing products if they could obtain them themselves and benefit the world? 

This year 250,000 tons of global warming gasses, 6000 tons of smog and 300 tons of sooty particulate matter were released only because of food transportation. This is the equivalent of 2,740,000 vehicles on the road and 318 power plants. The worst part is it affects our health as well. Asthma rates increased, as well as other sicknesses, in areas such as ports or other places wildly affected by transportation.

We need solutions to fix these major problems. Some of them would be going on a vegetarian diet or eating food grown in your own country/ close to where you live (also known as the 100 mile diet.)