Fair trade vs food miles

A little while ago I wondered about where the state of debate would lead between Fair Trade foods and the so-called 'Food Miles' measure. Having seen lots of shops campaigning for Fair Trade goods and many individuals campaigning for locally produced goods, I was intrigued to see which direction the debate would turn. It seemed to me that there was a real dilemma of humanitarian well-being versus climate change.

On further inspection however, it appears that the odds are stacked considerably towards one camp.

Food miles are a measure for calculating how much CO2 is produced by transporting food from production to shops. In the UK 95% of fruit and over half of the veg eaten comes from abroad. However the 'food miles' are purely based on the distance travelled to get onto our shelves and take no consideration of the energy expended and greenhouse gases released during the production of the food. If one bares in mind the energy-hungry lights needed in northern Europe to grow crops, then the issue of the emissions produced during the transportation of goods from overseas seems flawed. We clearly need to think more in terms of a total food emission than simply transport.

The point also comes to an economic one since that is what Fair Trade is all about- helping self-sufficiency of the developing world. Forcing a movement towards locally produced goods would mean taking money away from these developing nations, who in general are the ones causing least the damage to the environment. The revenue generated though Fair Trade goods hopefully goes towards educating and treating disease in these countries, which I would argue would have a much more constructive long term benefit for the planet and climate change.

So having set out to raise a possible conflict that consumers might feel towards their food shopping, I now feel that perhaps the issue of Food Miles is fairly redundant until a method of accounting for the greenhouse gas emissions during production can developed.