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How far does food travel

Jill Dyer

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posted 1 month ago

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Example: Cranberries grown in the U.S. sent to the United Kingdom, made into cranberry sauce and then exported to Australia.
AI seems to think this is about 15,950 miles or 25,770 kilometers. Just to enhance my turkey sandwich!
Surely there has to be a better way.

Life's too short, eat desert first! [Source of quote unknown]
You have to be warped to weave [ditto!]

Megan Palmer

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I buy frozen NZ grown cranberries to make my own cranberry sauce which marginally reduces the food miles.

In an ideal world, we would try to only eat produce we raise or grow ourselves or are grown and raised within our own region.

Anne Miller

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Most permies prefer to grow their own.

I also believe in shopping/buying local.

Foods like bananas must be grown somewhere else ...

Why do you not buy local and grow your own?

Invasive plants are Earth's way of insisting we notice her medicines. Stephen Herrod Buhner
Everyone learns what works by learning what doesn't work. Stephen Herrod Buhner

Tereza Okava

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Jill Dyer wrote:Example: Cranberries grown in the U.S. sent to the United Kingdom, made into cranberry sauce and then exported to Australia.

This kind of thing also gets me thinking. I stopped buying imported stuff, and started looking for better alternatives. I make a wicked mulberry and orange relish (both grow in my backyard). Then i get the cranberries when I visit the US, and enjoy them so much when I'm there. When I'm back home, I enjoy the real taste of mangoes and other tropical fruit that grow here.
The upside of the current trade war business is that maybe these distances are becoming more visible to consumers, and that these shipping miles are not sustainable (in several different aspects of the word).

Matt McSpadden

gardener

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This very question was what started me on my gardening journey. I started thinking about how much stuff was imported halfway around the world. Stuff that I could grow here in my own back yard. This prompted me to start a garden, to start raising chickens, and more recently to start a company drying culinary herbs here in Maine that were grown here in Maine... so that people who want things grown locally, can actually have some options.

Why not figure out at least 1 food that you eat, that you could grow or raise, then dive in and give it a try? Warning... growing your own food can be addictive though :)

"When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind." C.S. Lewis
Visit https://themaineingredient.com for organic, premium dried culinary herbs that are grown, processed, and packaged in the USA.

Carla Burke

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Yup, Matt - this is exactly why I'm trying to grow fig, avocado, and citrus trees. They can be outside in summer, but have to winter indoors. I've been thinking about bananas and pineapples, too, but so far, it's just thinking. A heated greenhouse would make it easier, but for now, my craft room and the living room are about as close a distance as I can get - but, *so far*, I haven't managed to get more than 8 months growth, out of any of them. I'm still learning.

In the meantime, I just do the best I can.

"The only thing...more expensive than education is ignorance."~Ben Franklin
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato

Jill Dyer

pollinator

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Location: Oz; Centre South

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Why do you not buy local and grow your own?

I would if there was a commercial crop in Australia - some folks are having a go with cranberries in the cooler parts (maybe it's a rumour).
I have now found dried cranberries (still imported, but halving the distance traveled) and frozen - ditto - and wouldn't you know they are out of stock! Then all I have to do is add in the sugar [additional 2,500 km] . . . [ the packs come sweetened with sucralose which adds a degree of difficulty!] perhaps it's better to stick with rhubarb chutney on my sandwich.
We apparently have a local "cranberry" https://wtlandcare.org/details/astroloma-humifusum/ not related to the US cranberry at all. Just need to track down a supplier of the plant, since I've never seen it growing anywhere, and it's supposed to be in my local area.

Life's too short, eat desert first! [Source of quote unknown]
You have to be warped to weave [ditto!]

Ac Baker

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The distance that e.g. industrially farmed chickens are transported frozen - from the Pacific coast of Asia to the Atlantic coast of Europe - just for 'cheap' 'fast food' is the most harmful in many ways, I feel.

Ensuring everyone has fair access to land and local food should make that unprofitable!

--
"Whitewashed Hope: A Message from 10+ Indigenous Leaders and Organizations"
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/whitewashed-hope-message-10-indigenous-leaders-and-organizations

I agree. Here's the link: http://stoves2.com