Calculating Food Miles
With processed foods that are made of many different ingredients, it is very complicated, though not impossible, to calculate the CO2 emissions from transport by multiplying the distance travelled of each ingredient, by the carbon intensity of the mode of transport (air, road or rail). However, as both Prof. Lang and the original Food Miles report noted, the resulting number – although interesting, cannot give the whole picture of how sustainable – or not – a food product is. Its value is in highlighting one of the many damaging aspects of the current, globalised food and farming system.
Read more about this topic: Food Miles
Famous quotes containing the words calculating, food and/or miles:
“What our children have to fear is not the cars on the highways of tomorrow but our own pleasure in calculating the most elegant parameters of their deaths.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“When no food is given to the ear,
Then let a little be given to the stomach.”
—Tiruvalluvar (c. 5th century A.D.)
“The mountainous region of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)