Global Food Market: Benefits, Costs & Sustainability

Introduction: Food in a Borderless World

As disparate regions of the globe become more and more intertwined through the expansion of global capital and the practical disintegration of international borders for massive corporations, the food people eat is simultaneously delivered from every region of the globe so that seasons no longer dictate the availability of any given food. However, the ability to obtain any given food out of season brings with it environmental and ecological damages, because the farming and transportation practices that make this global food market work are almost entirely unsustainable and detrimental to the continued health of the global food ecosystem.

In order to better understand the nature of this borderless society and how it affects the food one eats on any given day, it is useful to trace the path a couple of meals have taken from farm to plate — only by doing so do the ramifications of the global, borderless food trade become clear. By examining the ingredients of two recent meals, this essay will help to elucidate the benefits and drawbacks of a global food market.

Two Meals, Many Miles: Tracing Ingredients from Farm to Plate

The first meal discussed here was a lunch consisting of skinless chicken breast, a mixed salad, asparagus and spinach, a green apple, and iced tea. All of the ingredients for this meal, as well as those of the meal considered later, were purchased at Publix supermarket, an employee-owned chain. The chicken was made by Foster Farms, a company that touts its locally raised chickens but sells them across the country, demonstrating the reality that "food sold in U.S. supermarkets averages some 1,500 miles from farm to plate" ("Local-Food Movement: The Lure of the 100-Mile Diet," 2011). The vegetables — asparagus and spinach — came from California, but the green apple arrived all the way from New Zealand, and the iced tea was originally grown in Kenya.

The second meal under consideration was a dinner consisting of fresh salmon, wild rice, a squash medley, and a glass of Shiraz. The salmon came from Alaska, while the squash and wild rice were grown in California, with the Shiraz traveling from Australia.

Environmental Costs of Global Food Shipping

All of the foods grown in California likely made their way to the supermarket via a series of trucks, while the foods from Alaska, New Zealand, Kenya, and Australia likely traveled across the ocean by boat, though there is a possibility that airplanes were used — though this is unlikely, as shipping by boat is considerably cheaper. This global shipping of food, and even the relatively short transit of the California produce, demonstrates how foods purported to be grown locally and sustainably can still contribute to environmental degradation once introduced into the global food market. The pollution produced by the fuels used to transport these foods far outweighs any of the regional benefits that may have occurred in their production.

Especially in light of the threat anthropogenic climate change poses to the global food supply, the use of dirty fuels to ship these foods makes most claims toward sustainability questionable, because the entire system through which supposedly "sustainable" foods are sold is itself unsustainable in its current form. However, this is not to suggest that the global food market has no benefits, but rather that these benefits must be considered alongside the negative impacts.