food miles

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a measure of the distance food travels from where it is produced to where it is consumed, used as a rough proxy for the environmental cost — primarily in carbon emissions from transportation — associated with the food supply chain; the concept was introduced by British academic Tim Lang in the 1990s to make visible the hidden environmental costs of a globalised food system in which strawberries come from Spain, lamb from New Zealand, and apples from South Africa; while food miles captures an important dimension of food system sustainability, researchers have pointed out that it is an incomplete metric because production methods often matter more than distance — a conventionally farmed local tomato may have a higher carbon footprint than an organic imported one due to energy-intensive greenhouse heating — and that sea transport is far less carbon-intensive per tonne-kilometre than air freight or road transport