Every day millions of American consumers purchase food from grocery store chains without giving much thought to the oil and energy resources involved in chemical-intensive industrial agriculture and long distance food transportation.
To promote health, sustainability, and Fair Trade, and to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and non-renewable energy sources, the Organic Consumer’s Association has launched an education campaign, “Breaking the Chains: Buy Local, Organic and Fair Made.”
Agriculture accounts for 17 percent of all the energy used in the U.S. Petroleum-derived agricultural chemicals such as synthetic fertilizers (12 billion pounds per year), pesticides and herbicides (a billion pounds per year), account for more than half of all on-farm energy use. According to the Earth Policy Institute, the U.S. food system, from actual food production (synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, etc.), energy for irrigation, transportation, to refrigeration packaging & preparation, uses enough energy equal to supply all of France’s annual energy needs.
Food today travels farther than ever, with the average item of food traveling an average of 1,600 miles from farm to fork. Processed foods, on average travel 3,600 miles from farm to fork. According to Brian Halweil of Worldwatch Institute, a typical meal bought from a conventional supermarket chain uses four to 17 times more petroleum for transport than the same meal using locally produced ingredients.
High oil prices will inevitably inflate food prices, unless food is grown organically (without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, etc.). High prices for natural gas in the United States have increased the cost of nitrogen fertilizer by more than 40 percent in the past two years. As a result of increased production costs for U.S. food, more and more wholesalers, manufacturers and retail chains are turning abroad for their food purchases.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. now imports more agricultural goods than it exports.
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