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:
i'm interested in the breakdown of the other 64%. Grains, beans, and nuts should be relatively small because they don't need refrigeration, so the only things left are meat, dairy, eggs, and prepared foods.
Grains would be absolutely enormous due to maritime shipping though. Prolly rare growth (coffee/cacao beans) and grain for countries which don’t grow their own food due to this accounts for lots
Grains and cooking oil would be huge, because of capitalist inefficientcy no one eats the food they grow in their own country and juggles around various stuff though imports and exports, see Ukraine wheat and sunflower oil crisis