Media reports on food miles

The New York Times lists “food miles” — the distance that food travels from where it is grown to where it is sold — as one of the top new buzzwords for 2006. Another national publication, Business Review Online, also cites local foods among the top 10 food trends to watch in 2007.

This isn’t news to Rich Pirog, who leads the Center’s Marketing and Food Systems Initiative. Pirog has been fielding media inquiries since 2001 when he wrote the Center’s first of three food miles reports.

Rich Pirog explains the concept of food miles while a Japanese film crew tapes a segment for an environmental program in 2004.

This display invites shoppers to compare taste of Iowa and Washington apples.

 “The number of requests increased significantly last year when fuel prices skyrocketed and more people became interested in global warming,” Pirog said. “Food miles definitely have become a media metaphor.”

The Center’s “Food, Fuel and Freeways” study is one of the few reports that link carbon dioxide emissions and different food transportation systems. The study found that the conventional food system used 4 to 17 times more fuel and emitted 5 to 17 times more CO2 than the local and regional food systems, depending on the system and truck type. The study also found that produce arriving by truck at the Chicago terminal market from within the continental United States traveled 22 percent farther in 1998 than it did in 1981. Compared to 20 years ago, nearly twice as much produce arriving at the Chicago terminal market is from outside the continental United States. [Also see Checking the Food Odometer.]

“There is growing evidence that consumers are becoming increasingly attracted to locally grown and raised foods,” reports Business Review Online. “Fresher food is one draw and so is helping the environment. Moreover, the concept of ‘Food Miles’ is just beginning to surface, a concept that communicates the high-energy consumption required to bring foods from far-flung areas to market.”

“It isn’t too far fetched to speculate that we might see carbon ratings on packaged food and beverages to encourage energy conservation and fight global warming,” the article continues. “These ratings could express the carbon released into the atmosphere to grow, package and transport goods to market.”

Pirog worked with the ISU College of Business in 2003 to look at consumer attitudes toward ecolabels, a seal or logo indicating that a product has met a certain set of environmental and/or social standards or attributes. Using an ecolabel offers a highly visible avenue to educate consumers about locally grown, sustainably-raised foods.

“We found that the term locally grown commands a great deal of power and influence for consumers when purchasing meat or produce items,” Pirog said. “Foods that are locally grown hold great appeal for consumer respondents provided those products consistently offer the taste, freshness, quality, and value consumers are looking for.”

Within the past year, Pirog has fielded inquiries from Newsday, Chicago Sun-Times, Sirius Satellite Radio, Washington Post, Associated Press, National Public Radio, Omaha World-Herald, San Diego Union-Tribune, Green Living Guide, and magazines including Gourmet, Sierra, Yes!, Mother Earth News and the Oregonian. He also was contacted by Vancouver journalist James Mackinnon, who launched a “100-mile diet” web site and plans to write a book about eating only foods from within his region.

In 2004, shortly after the Leopold Center published its ecolabel study, Pirog was contacted by the producer of a Japanese environmental television program. A Japanese film crew visited Ames, where they taped a segment at a local grocery store about ecolabels. The ecolabel study has been used in numerous educational settings to demonstrate the connection between food travel and greenhouse gas emissions.

If Google can be used to gauge a word’s popularity, a search for “food miles” on the Internet results in 62 million hits. The first link goes to a BBC media site in the United Kingdom. The second link in the search is to Wikipedia, a online encyclopedia that first entered food miles as a term in September 2005. The third link leads to the pioneering Leopold Center study.