Making food global - identifying environmental detriments

“Imagine if you could take wild plants and consume them, food miles would basically turn into food feet.”

Homaro Cantu

The journey of food from the field used to be fairly straightforward. Farmers harvested food unique to the region, they transported it to the market, and people made their food with what their surroundings provided them. However, with the onset of globalization, better technologies and preservation techniques, food can and has gone places, being able to move across oceans and continents to reach the plates of others halfway around the world.

Land in any major city today and chances are you can find cuisine from all cultures, even those not necessarily belonging to the region at all. With the movement of people across the world as the barriers to migration collapsed, we end up in this cosmopolitan reality where you could order a Moroccan tagine in Australia and get a Spanish paella in Beijing. Even produce not found naturally in your country can now be picked up in your nearby supermarket. In Singapore, having food imported has diversified our food options manifold. HungryGoWhere recently released a gallery showcasing breakfasts from all around the world available right here in Singapore, and it is just one of many evidences that food in Singapore is no longer limited to just our local delights of chicken rice or bak ku teh. 

Just in one city alone, you can now find food from all cultures in Singapore, be it local chicken rice, to Japanese ramen, German schnitzel or Mexican tacos

However, transporting food and produce across continents can bear negative impacts on the environment because food coming in from overseas arrive in ships or are flown in via airplanes. These forms of transport emit large volumes of CO₂ emissions and this is a driver for global climate change (Lewis and Mitchell, 2014).  Scientists have expressed this as food miles, which is the distance traveled from the food's country of origin to the country of destination.  For those unsure about food miles, learn more about it from this video. 

Simply put, the further our food comes from, the more miles we accumulate. Singapore in particular could be a major contributor to this problem, given that produce from all over the world has to be flown in or shipped to the island.

While much of our food still comes from regional neighbours, Singapore has accumulates large amounts of food miles by importing from countries like the US, Brazil and South Africa. 
(Source: AVA, 2014)

If we wish to address climate change, we can’t just look towards alternative energy, and I believe food miles have to stop accumulating, fast. The 2014 Greendex Report, a report focusing on how sustainable our habits are, was published just last month and it comments that while people were being more health conscious, global consumption habits are still contributing heavily to our ecological footprint. To focus so much on our own personal health over the state of the Earth, the world we live in is distastefully human, but if we continue endorsing the amount of cross-continental movement for our food, we will expect the Earth’s environmental problems to only continue, and our future generations will be the ones who will have to bear the consequences.

One way suggested by people to lower food miles is to support local produce or become a 'locavore', but seen mostly in the United States and the European Union, where the environmental movement is stronger. What happens though when there are no local farms around?

 Penguin tries hard to be a locavore, only to realize that the only food available is in the nearby supermarket

(Source: http://ingyin1bfoodie.wordpress.com/tag/visual-essay/)

Having a small agricultural industry, being a locavore in Singapore is virtually impossible. What we can (and probably should) do however is to re-look at where our food comes from, and endorse regional alternatives. Why get pork from Canada when you could get pork in Thailand instead? This is one way to minimize our own carbon footprint, as we look for ways to be environmentally sustainable.

People contest that food miles aren’t everything, and that it might be becoming an outdated concept. Transportation is only one part of the problem, and looking into food production is equally important as well. The problem is determining the exact carbon footprint from each process to find out which food is more environmentally sustainable would be both time-consuming and costly. Hence, I still affirm using food miles, and that it can be a very good gauge of how sustainable our food is presently, and how sustainable it can be in the future.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. 

Let’s bring this idea into food as well.

References
AVA, (2014). AVA Annual Report (Corporate) AY2013/14.

Lewis, M. and Mitchell, A. (2014). Food Miles: Environmental Protection or Veiled Protectionism?.Michigan Journal of International Law, 35(3).