Analysis of the transport of imported food in Spain and its contribution to global warming

Abstract

Through the process of globalization, food has experienced an intense territorial restructuring process. Local agric-food links have weakened at the same time as daily products arrived from distant lands. There is presently a wide international debate on the importance of transport in the configuration of the agric-food system and its contribution in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG). The direct environmental costs of the transport of imported food, that is the ‘external food miles’, have been estimated in kilometer (km), ton (t), ton-kilometer (t-km) and GHG in Spain between 1995 and 2011. The analysis is made by ten food groups including 136 products, with special attention to the most important ones (cereals and animal feed), as well as by means of transport (air, rail, road and water) and from 113 different countries belonging to six geographical areas. Two phases are identified during this period: an expansive phase (1995–2007), in which the t-km of imported food increased from 81.8 to 147.8 million t-km and environmental pressure rose from 3.1 to 5.4 million CO2-eq t, and a recession phase (2007–2011), in which environmental pressure subsided as a consequence of the reduction of imports, even though it still remained above the 1995 level. The article reveals a clear interrelation between amounts, distances and modal distribution when it comes to determining the environmental cost of transporting food imports in the two periods studied. It also reflects on the role of the external food miles in the Spanish agri-food system from a sustainability perspective.

Energy Assessment of Pastoral Dairy Goat Husbandry from an Agroecological Economics Perspective. A Case Study in Andalusia (Spain)

“…The distances travelled by the different types of feed are calculated from the information provided by the Cooperativa Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, located in the town of Olvera (Cádiz, Andalusia), which supplies most of the fodder and feed concentrates used in the area. On average, fodder travels 175 km by road and, when imported, 2400 km by boat [61]. The coefficients that allow the estimation of the energy consumed in transportation have been taken from these same authors.…”

Assessment of the diet-environment-health-cost quadrilemma in public school canteens. an LCA case study in Galicia (Spain)

“…In the case of transportation, average performances were assumed for both distances and means according to the information available for Spain. We used import and export data provided by the FAO (2020) to calculate the degree of food dependence per product and drew the data on international distances and means of transportation from Pérez-Neira et al (2016). As regards the food produced in Spain, the percentages of foodstuffs coming from Galicia and the rest of Spain were differentiated according to information from the inventories.…”

“…These factors largely condition the environmental impact of school canteen diets and menus (see Batlle-Bayer et al 2021). In terms of non-renewable energy use, the packaging and transportation phases are the most prominent given that an important percentage of the food is imported, and their supply requires long distance travel by land (Pérez-Neira et al 2016;Benvenuti et al 2016). This means that approximately 90% of the environmental impact of school meals is accumulated prior to the food even reaching Galician schools.…”