Grains of Truth

Launch your web browser and type in the URL, www.foodkm.com.

Then enter your postal code and, in a few seconds, you will see a list of market-garden farms, markets, bakers, butchers, vineyards, sites and restaurants within 100 clicks of your home. (You can switch to miles, if you prefer.)

You’d be forgiven for assuming that some environmental group or political association is behind the site, but you’d be mistaken.

Fact is, the project is the work of only one man, Keith Stoltz, from Listowel, Ont.

Stoltz, who was raised on a farm and who spends his days as a farm-equipment dealer, decided he wanted to do something to support the environment as well as his local farmers.

"We like to buy locally, and we wondered how to find all these local farmers. This would encourage them and, at the same time, it would decrease the mileage traveled by our food products and our environmental footprint," he says.

Stoltz invested his own money in the project, and now farmers can be listed on the site for free. At present, foodkm.ca counts some 700 suppliers.

The idea behind Stoltz’s project is a trendy measurement concept known as "food kilometers" or "food-miles."

The idea is to help consumers understand where their food comes from. Knowing that, the theory goes, consumers will want to reduce the distance between the field and the table.

Theoretically, this would cut transportation costs, reduce time for the food in-transit and, yes, minimize the pollution associated with transportation. And, incidentally, it would fill the bank accounts of local food producers.

Be prepared to hear more about it.

More and more major commodities producers are adding food-mile labels to their products, touting their efforts to minimize carbon-footprint because they believe the public wants them to do so. And several for-profit organizations have sprung up around the movement. Spud.ca, for example, is a west-coast delivery service for locally grown food ordered via the Internet.

Walmart is providing its corporate purchasers with a "food-miles calculator" to measure distances between suppliers and distribution centers so even Walmart buyers can use food-miles when making purchasing decisions.

Furthermore, advocates for locally grown food can be some of the trucking business’ loudest critics. They believe — erroneously as it turns out — that distance equals pollution.

Of all the energy used in the production of food, only
four percent is a result of the trip it takes
between the field and the table, one study says.

The problem is, the food-km issue is not simple or one-sided; and the more you examine the issue the more complicated it gets. Generally, most of the food we eat travels much farther than it used to.

It’s safe to estimate that unless you’ve grown it yourself, most of your meal, in Canada anyway, has traveled somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500 km before it landed on your table.

That’s about 25 percent farther than it was 30 years ago.

But there are also more varieties available, fresh when you want them. And it’s mostly affordable. From all accounts, consumers would like to keep things that way. To anyone living north of the 49th parallel, the obstacles to growing bananas locally seem pretty obvious.

And that’s where it starts to get complicated. Sure you can buy locally grown tomatoes in southern Manitoba, but chances are that most of the time, they have to come from a hothouse, which, of course, consumes energy. Plus they cost more.

As a very pointed article in Europe noted, "food grown in areas where there is high use of fertilizers and tractors is likely to be anything but carbon-friendly.

"The concept of food miles is unhelpful and stupid. It doesn’t inform about anything except the distance traveled," Dr. Adrian Williams, of the National Resources Management Centre at Cranfield University, said.

What really should be measured besides food miles is food tons per mile (or km). One ton/mile is the amount of CO2 produced to move a ton of food one mile.

Simply put, a truck loaded with food would have a far higher ton/mile rating than the equivalent number of cars that it would require to move the same amount of food.

Jerome Petigny is in charge of the Québécois Foundation For The Environment. He says that if you want to determine the true environmental impact of food, you have to consider the product’s total life cycle. And local growing seasons.

In certain cases, the Alberta beef on your plate can leave a bigger footprint than the New Zealand lamb you bought at the corner supermarket. And if you want to eat mangos in Quebec in January, there’s a price to pay.

"The distance is not equivalent to pollution. It is necessary to take into account all the parameters of the life cycle during the analysis, including the production of the good," Petigney indicates.

"The sheep of New Zealand browse on grass outside almost all year while a cow in Alberta will have to spend months in a heated cattle shed.

"If you add up the pollution caused during the production, transport, growth and feeding of the cow, its environmental impact will be significantly more than the lamb from New Zealand."

A recent British Department of Environmental Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) study showed that a tomato grown in Spain and eaten in Britain has a lower carbon-footprint than a British-grown tomato because the British tomato needs a hothouse.

According to another study by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, of all the energy used in the production of food, only four percent is a result of the trip it takes between the field and the table.

Petigny estimates that since 2002, on-road diesel engine manufacturers have succeeded in decreasing NOx and particulate matter by more than 90 percent. And those figures continue to drop as technology advances and governments introduce more stringent regulations.

Still, do not be surprised if, in the very near future, you come across an RFQ that includes a question about your fleet’s carbon footprint.

More and more shippers are insisting their carriers come clean on their fleets’ emissions programs.

Last year, Walmart said it will require its top suppliers to account for their greenhouse gas emissions, including the emissions that come from trucks.

So how do you answer?

According to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), you’ll be faced with several rather complex measuring and reporting methods, none of which is wholly satisfactory at the moment.

People such as Mike Naatz, the president of the customer care division at YRC Worldwide and a member of ATRI’s advisory committee, says there’s a need for the trucking industry to come up with some standardized approaches.

At the moment, your best and simplest bet is to refer to the American Environment Protection Agency (EPA’s) Smartway guidelines or contact the FleetSmart program operated by Natural Resources Canada.

Even there some elements of the carbon footprint go M-I-A.

Smartway’s system only includes emissions created by tractors and doesn’t include other supply-chain inputs such as yard emissions and the emissions ­created by staff members driving to and from work.

Still, the question will be put to you: What steps have you taken to run squeaky clean? How big is your carbon footprint?

At the same time, of course, the customer will also be asking you to lower your rates.

Simply put, customers who want to pay less to get their freight moved at the same time as they want you to run green are like those people who want to eat kiwis, but want them grown in Labrador City.

They can’t have it both ways.