Food’s Energy Footprint

To be unconcerned about sustainability and whether current practices can long endure, you would need to be Rip Van Winkle—suddenly awakened after 40 years by the rumbling, not of tenpins but of earthquakes, triggered by underground hydraulic fracturing and its wastewater disposal. Wide awake or eyes wide shut, everyone is already experiencing one or another crisis of depleting global resources. In this country, the popular belief persists that technical improvements will solve any shortages. But the resources that have driven or supported decades of amazing economic expansion, it turns out, are finite. Energy in its many forms drives much of our world economy and its conflicts— though the conflicts are often overlaid with propaganda on ideological and religious issues that fracture a common global foundation. Many people cannot even believe that the U.S. would go to war over energy resources— one more indicator of how jarring it can be to wake up.

Our better angels and the commons call us to respond, to mitigate threats and build better trends. Given seemingly overwhelming trends, it is essential to continue providing examples of practical and sustainable actions. Without claiming certainty, our ethical course is to act as though what we do may make a difference. The right direction, at the very least, requires doing things now rather than later, and engaging in practices that we believe are consistent with long-term sustainability.

The problems are both local and global, and cooperatives can lead at both levels. The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), in its “Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade,” has identified sustainability as one of five key actions areas in which it calls for co-op leadership; find details on pages 7 and 22 and on the ICA site. The ICA “Blueprint” page also provides a link to its 2013 international “Sustainability Scan” on co-op practices.

Sustainability measures

Energy strongly affects the costs of most of our public services and private choices, and those costs, too, are often disguised. The entire food chain, of course, is highly energy-intensive, from field to plate. New sustainability measures, reported here, lead me to consider energy consumption in food—the sector that employs most of this column’s readers.

Food cooperatives are in an excellent position to model transparent as well as energyconserving business practices, while educating co-op owners and the public. Describing an appropriately broad context, elsewhere in this issue the National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) states: “Sustainability is a defining issue of our day, and co-ops can take a leading role in rapidly improving their social, environmental, and economic impacts.” At the same time, co-op shoppers often are among those who are most concerned about energy use and conservation. This presents coops with ongoing but challenging educational opportunities.

On behalf of its member co-ops, NCGA has developed sustainability measures and a software- based program for food co-ops that helps them “measure their sustainability baseline, make strategic improvements, track progress, benchmark to other stores, and share their success with stakeholders.” Since busy grocery stores are major users of resources, this tool is timely. Perhaps co-ops can anticipate that, after more experience using these measures, we will see something like common cooperative sustainability statements.

In food as in other areas, global warming and concerns over sustainability lead to examining energy, since total energy use parallels emissions fairly closely. There are already many good examples of initiatives by food co-ops that reduce waste and support electric power from renewable sources, but their impact will remain small—short of much broader action including shifting to a more locally distributed energy infrastructure.

Background notes on that cautionary statement: Electricity generation is only a part of total power used and fuels burned, and it is not a ready substitute for many power needs. All energy use, including renewables and nuclear generation, works on a foundation of mining, manufacturing, combustion, and waste—all largely dependent on nonrenewable fuels—and the infrastructure that all these fuels require needs frequent upgrades or replacement involving all of the above. Arguments that things would look different if petroleum-dependent transportation as well as electricity-dependent heating and cooling were replaced by renewable sources usually don’t address the financing, resources, and other barriers to getting there.

Since there is no magic way to get from here to there, there follows an often unwelcome yet necessary message: An essential factor in attempting to achieve sustainability is practicing conservation—using LESS.

Counting calories in local food

Owners and shoppers look to the co-op for leadership. Willy-nilly, nearly all food co-ops are already engaged in study and action around these topics of energy and carbon footprint (an activity’s contribution to global-warming gases). I want to mention additional factors that shape discussions and education around food and energy, supplemented by the accompanying chart showing the contributing sectors and energy inputs in the food system.

Concerning local food: certainly, a food system that is resilient (able to adapt to change) and sustainable (able to renew itself for a long period) requires a viable local business component. Yet to have a sustainable local food system is not especially a statement about energy consumption or carbon footprint, as large as those issues are, so much as a description of any future energy-constrained society.

I would go so far as to say that having a resilient local food system is only indirectly about energy consumption. Local food resilience is more about enabling production diversity, maintaining a functioning infrastructure and economy, and implementing supportive public policy—and those are very large challenges for the near future.

As for energy burned in the food chain, a corrective is often needed to “food miles,” one popular way to think about the energy impact of food. The term describes how many miles on average your food travels to reach the store or point of purchase. But this does not at all equate to energy impact or carbon footprint— for two reasons.

First, compared to one large truckload delivered from a greater distance, many local but small producer deliveries may easily result in greater transportation/handling energy use and carbon footprint. This applies to stores as well as to farmers markets and CSA arrangements. Numerous local deliveries and pickups can yield a disproportionate amount of fuel consumed.

Secondly, whatever the source of food, transportation isn’t typically more than a small fraction of total energy use in the food production/ delivery chain. Take a look at the accompanying chart showing energy use per food calorie. (This USDA Economic Research Service data from 2002 is current enough for this discussion.)

“Freight” or transportation, as indicated in the chart, is the smallest energy component— or the second smallest, after packaging, even if you were to add to transportation an additional small part of the wholesale/retail energy use. This finding is similar to other studies in which food costs are measured in dollars, and where transportation or freight is estimated at 13–15% of retail grocery prices.

There are powerful arguments for supporting local producers. But lower energy use and lower carbon footprint may or may not be among those benefits. Meaningfully reducing energy use in the food system, whether through local foods or in the rest of our grocery supply, is a much broader challenge than “food miles” would suggest.

Counting calories at home

Education about the benefits of supporting local producers of quality food is critical for generating a sustainable food supply. However, concerning energy consumption in the food chain and education about that, I refer you again to the accompanying chart. It turns out that household energy use—personal transportation, home storage and cooking, plus substantial waste—is the single largest component of energy embedded in the food system that encompasses field to table.

What this says to me is that, along with food purchases that support organic and sustainable farming, co-op shoppers’ food-at-home practices can have significant impact on reducing energy use. Again, co-ops are well positioned to offer education about food’s energy footprint. Interestingly, education about eating well with lower costs appears to be parallel to education about eating well with lower energy: it is enhanced by planning, learning through both examples and concrete practice.

Despite or, ironically, because of its advanced infrastructure, the U.S. wastes 40 percent of the food it produces, like much of the rest of the world. Nearly half of that waste occurs at retail locations and at home. More refrigeration, paradoxically, seems to generate excess purchases and consequent waste. (Studies cited in NYT 8/27/2014, “What Do Chinese Dumplings Have to Do with Global Warming?”) Clearly, both retailers and their customers have huge contributions of their own to consider in discussions of conserving food and energy.