Strawberries in Winter
In our globalized world, many people hold firmly to the belief that local is better. That conviction is particularly strong when it comes to food. In Washington, where I live, farmers markets are crowded with shoppers (including myself) who are prepared to pay outrageous prices for a basket of apples or a pound of cheese if it originated at a nearby farm. We convince ourselves that what we eat is fresher, purer, or more environmentally virtuous because it was grown or manufactured on a family farm close by.
I recently had the chance to participate in an unusual radio program, produced by the BBC, that takes a look at the booming international trade in food. Called The Food Chain, the program asks why long-distance shipments of food are growing so quickly. Part of the answer, it will not surprise you to hear, is that low transport costs and high reliability make it feasible to import goods that would not be traded if freight rates were higher, a story I tell in my book The Box. But an even more important cause of increased trade in food, I suspect, is changed consumer preferences. We expect to eat the foods of our choice when we want to eat them, and if that means importing strawberries from Mexico or Chile when local berries are out of season, so be it.
Those of a certain age can remember when life was otherwise. In the town where I grew up, in the U.S. Midwest, having fish for dinner meant popping a box of frozen fish sticks in the oven. Fresh fish was something our supermarket simply did not carry, because it had no means of bringing it in. Now, the town boasts several sushi bars. Thank modern logistics, including refrigerated containers and air freight, for providing diners with an option that previously did not exist.
One current line of attack on such variety in our food supply is that long-distance shipments of food are “unsustainable.” By this, the critics usually are taking aim at the large amounts of greenhouse gases supposedly produced while transporting food internationally. Part of my contribution to the BBC program was to point out that “local” is not at all the same as “sustainable.” International trade in food often involves huge economies of scale, which means food produced on another continent may be transported far more efficiently than food produced nearby. Moving 40-foot containers of fruit great distances in a large containership can result in much lower emissions per ton than carrying smaller quantities a hundred miles in a diesel truck.
The BBC has taken an unusually sophisticated look at the food trade. I hope you’ll have a chance to listen.