A Globalized Food System
The current industrial agricultural model has benefited human populations (above all else) over the last century, taking the human population from approximately 1.6 billion people in the early 1900’s to over 7 billion people on 31st of October 2011. The widespread clearance of land across all continents for agriculture, combined with the use of heavy machinery and artificial fertilizers, has contributed to the widespread exploitation of the planet and ecosystems on a scale never seen before.
Long Distance Supply Chains Unsustainable
A study by the Centre for Environmental Studies (CERES) out of Australia examined how far the average basket of goods travelled to get to the consumer. It was established that the basket of regular goods travelled a total of 70,803 km, equivalent to travelling nearly twice around the circumference of the Earth (40,072 km). The data-collected total greenhouse gas emissions estimate for all food trucks transporting all road-transported food items, over the total road transport distance, was 16, 989 tonnes (t) CO2–e. If all the food trucks were transporting all food items on the same day, the emissions from this one day of transportation (16, 989 t CO2–e), is equivalent to 4,247 cars driving for one year. (1)
