Food trade plays a key role in achieving global food security. With a growing consumer demand for diverse food products, transportation has emerged as a key link in food supply chains. We estimate the carbon footprint of food-miles by using a global multi-region accounting framework. We calculate food-miles based on the countries and sectors of origin and the destination countries, and distinguish the relevant international and domestic transport distances and commodity masses. When the entire upstream food supply chain is considered, global food-miles correspond to about 3.0 GtCO2e (3.5–7.5 times higher than previously estimated), indicating that transport accounts for about 19% of total food-system emissions (stemming from transport, production and land-use change). Global freight transport associated with vegetable and fruit consumption contributes 36% of food-miles emissions—almost twice the amount of greenhouse gases released during their production. To mitigate the environmental impact of food, a shift towards plant-based foods must be coupled with more locally produced items, mainly in affluent countries.
Fruit and veggies are officially treats :doomer:
you can't generalize this across all food because some areas are so much more suited for various kinds of agriculture that it's "worth" the transit emissions shipping stuff to places that would otherwise be less efficiently doing local production.
i can't be bothered to look for it but i remember seeing something about new zealand is so much better for herding sheep that it was better to ship mutton from there to wales than whatever feed and fertilizer wales needs to use.