Introduction

Consumers and environmentalists in developed countries have understood the concept of “food miles” for years, but its popularity has recently begun to increase. This has implications for developing country exporters. The focus on distance traveled is an attempt to highlight the hidden costs of energy use. This is based on the notion that most energy is derived from non-renewable sources, and is under-priced. The food miles concept’s recent rise in popularity reflects the globalization of the food sector and increasing demand for out-ofseason and exotic foods, rising fuel and food prices, greater awareness of the link between transport and carbon emissions and the desire to limit greenhouse gas (carbon) emissions, and other environmental concerns. Producers in importing countries have an incentive to encourage the food miles movement as a means of protecting themselves from foreign competition. The focus of this paper is on food miles issues associated with the import of products from developing countries. As the concept of food miles has been an issue in organic agriculture since before the early 1990s, many of the examples quoted in this paper are from that sector.

The Soil Association, which sets organic standards in the United Kingdom (UK), has encouraged consumption of locally produced food for some time. More recently, however, the association has decided to change its standards, refusing to certify air freighted produce as organic, unless “it also meets the Soil Association’s own Ethical Trade or the Fairtrade Foundation’s standard” (Soil Association 2008). This is effectively a ban on air freighted imported organic products. It is likely that such a ban will decrease energy use and emissions, but at a cost to local consumers (higher prices) and foreign producers (loss of market). The major beneficiaries will be local producers. For goods imported by sea, rail, or road, it is likely that a switch from imported to locally produced goods will increase global energy use and pollution, in contrast to stated aims (Vanzetti and Wynen 2002). This is because the energy used in international transport is generally relatively small compared with the additional use of energy and other resources in local production.

While the food miles idea has some merit, we argue in this paper that the concept is fundamentally flawed and that its advocates are not only misguided, but may be doing more harm than good. There are three reasons for this: first, although locally produced goods may generate less pollution in transport than imported goods, this benefit may be more than offset by increased pollution during the production phase, for example through the use of gas in greenhouses; second, the mode and scale of transport are important, with sea and rail transport being more efficient than road or air; third, the concept of food miles emphasizes one factor (energy) but ignores others, such as pesticides, labor, and capital.

Section 2 of this paper will explain the concept of food miles. Section 3 addresses the concept’s recent popularity while Section 4 deals with the potential impacts. The pitfalls of the concept are then discussed in Section 5. The concept’s potential effects on specific countries are illustrated with some examples in Section 6; the focus will be on imports of produce into Europe, mainly organic, and exports from Africa. New Zealand, perhaps the most distant country of all, has produced some studies of relevance to the issue of food miles, and they also provide some examples. Finally, after exploring some preferred approaches, we present the implications and conclusions of this work.

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