Local food systems and the ecological footprint

A food mile is a term used to measure the farm to market distance and cost for each and every product on the dinner plate. Seventy-five percent of what is harvested and mined from the earth is shipped to towns and cities, an area that covers only 2.5 percent of the earth’s surface, yet includes one half its human population. Natural resources are moved with massive energy and pollution costs to satisfy urban consumer and corporate demands. William Rees has defined the concept of an ecological footprint as a means to characterize the impact of human consumption on the biosphere in a single figure. More specifically, we can talk of an urban footprint.  Cities require vast areas of land for their sustenance and have come to depend on large amounts of food being brought in from outside the land area they actually occupy. London (UK) for example has a surface area of some 160,000 ha. With only 12% of Britain’s population, London requires the equivalent of 40% of Britain’s entire productive land for its food (Deelstra and Girdardet, 2000).  London’s ecological footprint goes beyond the close and far places from which it extracts resources, to Chicago and the U.S. Great Plains that supply its maize, to Bogota and the Colombian highlands that supply its coffee and to the Indian highlight for its tea. This inevitably raises the question of the extent to which such an urban pattern (and the lifestyle behind it) can be sustained without unacceptable environmental and social costs. The single largest component of the urban footprint is food. As countries and cities continue to urbanise, worldwide demand for land to feed cities will continue to grow. Sooner or later, cities that have come to take large-scale food imports for granted may need to consider reviving agricultural production in urban areas or the urban fringe to reduce the demand for land surface elsewhere.

Slow food movement
Slow food is a burgeoning movement (started in Italy) that favours local production, processing, marketing, and consumption. The movement was founded in the late eighties to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. They believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work. One of the strategies promoted by Slow Food is the direct linking of producers and consumers. We have already seen that urban agriculture can play mayor role in local food production, processing and marketing; and is ideally suited for establishing direct links between farmers and consumers.  Because of its closeness to markets, urban agriculture produce additionally provides an important source of fresh (and thus better tasting?) food. For more information, please look at www.slowfood.com