Food transport costs Britain £9bn a year
Food transportation is having a significant impact on the environment and is costing Britain £9bn a year, according to a government report out today.
The report for the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), says food transportation has grown massively over the last decade along with associated congestion, road accidents and carbon emissions.
Farming minister Lord Bach described the report as an “interesting contribution” to the debate on food miles.
The level of food transported by heavy goods vehicles has doubled since 1974 while the average consumer now travels 898 miles every year to buy food.
The government intends to work with the food industry to find ways to tackle the problem. It has consulted the industry on achieving a 20 per cent reduction in the environmental and social impact of food transportation by 2012.
Lord Bach said it was a complex matter that went beyond discussion about ‘food miles’. He said a “range of factors have an effect on the overall impacts of food transport, not purely the distance travelled by individual products”.
The report showed that “buying local products has the potential to greatly reduce the distance food is transported but that the benefits can be offset by increased road congestion if they are supplied in a less transport efficient way”.
A spokesman from the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) said the organisation was committed to existing strategies for sustainable development. But the existing supply chains for food distribution were already “extremely fuel efficient and low polluting” and it would be difficult to make further reductions.
“The FDF welcomes the acknowledgement that more local sourcing does not automatically reduce the environmental and social costs associated with food miles,” he added.
The Lib Dem environment spokesman, Norman Baker, welcomed the report but said the research was “long overdue”.
“Last year I published research of my own which revealed how supermarket lorries travel the equivalent of two return trips to the moon everyday. Today’s consumers are asking for more than ‘pile ’em high and sell ’em cheap’,” he said.
Friends of the Earth also welcomed the government’s decision to look at the problem of food transportation, but said it should go further.
Vicky Hird, Friends of the Earth’s food campaigner, said: “At last the government appears to have woken up to the huge environmental and social impacts of transporting our food. But unfortunately it still appears to be unwilling to take adequate action to tackle it.”
“The government must get tougher to reduce food miles. Unless it tackles this problem the impacts will become worse and government targets to reduce carbon dioxide levels will be much harder to achieve,” Ms Hird said.
Of the £9bn a year costs, the report states £5bn is due to road congestion, road accidents account for £2bn and damage to road infrastructure costs £800mn. But emissions and noise pollution cost relatively little
