Do you want to "Go the Distance" with your food?

For one of my classes I have been researching the topic food miles. Food miles is a calculation of the amount of miles a product travels from producer to consumer. It can contain the distance from farm to processing plant and then processing plant to store. More precise calculations include the distance traveled for the feed for animals. for example, the mileage of the corn to the mill to the processing plant to turn into feed, to the farm to feed the animals.

The theory behind food miles is that they can be a calculation to represent the amount of energy and fossil fuels used to transport food. They can also provide a comparison of local versus outsourced food.

For example:
Eggs bought at Walmart under the brand name of Sunny Farms, Hillandale Farms, or Sunny Meadow travel on average 575 miles from plant to store. In contrast eggs that I buy from the farmer's market from a local farmer travel 18.3 miles. That means the Walmart eggs travel 31 times farther then the local eggs. But this is not the case with all products.

Meat is a more complicated issue. For these calculations I included distance from farm to processing plant (slaughter house) and the distance from processing to store. The generic Walmart boneless skinless chicken breasts tracked to a Tyson plant (irony huh? Tyson chicken sold right next to it for a higher price). I had to average the farms that could go to that plant (I chose the 4 closest, based on grain distribution locations. All farms must be within 60 miles of a Tyson grain mill.) The total food miles for Walmart chicken is 763.2 miles.

For the local farmer I added the distance from his farm to the processing plant and back plus the distance to market. This added up to 334.3 food miles. That is only half of what Walmart's was.

I was surprised to, but as a product becomes more processed and the food miles go up. To me there seems to be a larger benefit to buying produce local than meat, since there are fewer steps involved.

Did any of this surprise you?