2.  Food System

Food transported across the world burns up a lot of fossil fuel and contributes to global warming. "Food miles" - the total distance in miles the food item is transported from field to plate - has become accepted as a convenient indicator of sustainability; and has led to a general movement towards local production and local consumption in order to minimize them. This raises fundamental questions about the sustainability of the globalised food trade and the increasing concentration of the food supply chain and distribution in the hands of fewer and fewer transnational corporations.
 
UK's Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has commissioned a report to look into The Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator of Sustainable Development, which was published in July 2005. The company commissioned to do the report was AEA Technology, formerly part of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and now a private sector company that was floated on the London stock exchange in 1996. [1] Given the narrow remit of the report, it nevertheless came up with some damning evidence against the dominant food system. The question is whether the political will is there to move forward from the discredited model. [2] 

Greenhouse gas emissions from eating (France)

1. Agriculture direct emission ----------------------------------------42.0 Mt C

2. Fertilizers (French fertilizer industry

only, more than half imported.) ------------------------------------------0.8 Mt C

3. Road transport goods (within France

only, not counting export/import) ---------------------------------------4.0 Mt C

4. Road transport people------------------------------------------------1.0 Mt C

5. Truck manufacture & diesel---------------------------------------- 0.8 Mt C

6. Store heating (20% national total) ----------------------------------0.4 Mt C

7. Electricity (nuclear energy in France,

multiply by 5 elsewhere) -------------------------------------------------0.7 Mt C

8. Packaging ---------------------------------------------------------------1.5 Mt C

9. End of life of packaging (overall

Emissions of waste 4 Mt) ------------------------------------------------1.0 Mt C

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total ----------------------------------------------------------------------52.0 Mt C

National French emission -------------------------------------------171.0 MtC

Share linked to food system ------------------------------------------30.4%

One reason is that transport in general accounts for one eighth of world oil consumption and the transport of food products accounts for a considerable slice of this. Consider that the import of food products and animal feeds into the UK by sea, air and road, accounts for over 83 billion ton kilometres and this requires 1.6 billion litres of fuel which would normally lead to annual emissions of 4.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. [3]
 
Air transport is the most energy-intensive form of transport. To give an idea, 127 calories of energy (as aviation fuel) are needed to transport 1 calorie of lettuce across the Atlantic. Unfortunately more and more food is being transported by air rather than by ship, indeed since 1980 imports by air- freight of fruit and vegetables into the UK have increased by nearly 4 times. [4]
 
It is a popular trend to export and import food. But we forget that this is highly expensive as it costs a lot of energy in taking food from one place to another. However, this trend may be taken in a positive sense if a country is more capable of exporting food than importing food. Two examples illustrate this.
 

We feel proud when we hear that our cash crops are getting world market but we need to think how much GHG was emitted in exporting these mangoes and roses.
 
What we need is the localization of food. Why don't we eat what is sown in nearby land. The more the food travels the more processing it needs. The more processing it needs the more we take risk with our health. We are practicing monoculture in agriculture. We have isolated rural and urban areas in such a way that our food needs are fulfilled largely by rural areas. This increases market distance. We need more roads, vehicles to take our food to consumers. No study has been done on food traveling in India. However, we can learn some things from other countries such as UK and France. The solution lies in localization of food. We will discuss this in detail in section on alternatives.
 
Other factors in our food system are storage and food processing.  The food processing sector expects more emphasis to be given by the government on laying out stringent policies to minimize the wastage of farm produces in the country. Currently, about 30 to 40 per cent of the Indian farm produce gets wasted because of the existing mismatch between the quantum of farm production and its processing time.

It leads to a colossal damage and wastage of farm produce worth Rs 50,000 crores per annum to the country. Commenting on the wastage of the agri-produce, the chief operating officer of Nashik based Sarda Food Processing Industry, Sandip Sinha commented: "One of the main factors attributed to such a huge loss is the functioning of the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) across the country. It functions like a closed club. [5]
 
Towards this the Ministry of Food Processing has envisaged a plan "Vision 2015" to realize the vast potential of Indian agriculture. This is to be achieved by trebling the size of the processed food sector so as to enhance farmer income, generate employment opportunities and contribute to overall national growth. As per the stated vision, the market size for processed foods will increase from Rs.4,000 crore to Rs.13,500 crore (at 2003-2004 prices). The share of value added products in processed food consumption is estimated to grow from 38% to 58% by the year 2015. [6]
 
But is this what we want from food processing that more and more food should be processed. Should stop consuming fresh food? Certainly not. The aim for food processing should be to reduce the wastage of food.  

(also see Life of 1 kg tomato ketchup)