Food Mileage

Over at Consumers Union of Japan, we published a brief discussion about Food Mileage, written by Miyake Seiko at Food Safety Citizens' Watch. I think this quote from a study by Tetsuya Nakata at the Kyushu Regional Agricultural Administration Office is significant :

In 2001, Japan’s total volume of food imports was 58 million tons and its food mileage was 900 billion ton-km, the latter being almost 1.6 times the total domestic freightage. International comparisons show that this figure is high. The food mileage of South Korea and the United States are around 30 to 40% of Japan’s, the United Kingdom and Germany about 20% and France around 10%. The per capita figure of Japan is also high.Japan’s remarkably high food mileage is largely due to particular commodities such as grains and distant export countries such as the United States, and incurs environmental concerns. Japan’s huge volume of food imports accompanied by long-distance transportation may be damaging the global environment through the increase of carbon dioxide emissions.

Noting that the distance of importing food has been getting shorter, as Japan has imported more foods from Asia, Miyake Seiko also points out that Japan continues to import a large amount of feed grains and food oil crops from the United States, Canada and Australia for its animal feed and food oil - and that such crops are also increasingly used as biofuels, and the prices have been pushed higher due to rivalry on the global commodity markets.

Japanese consumers appreciate that its rice farmers have continued to supply this country with 100% of the rice eaten in Japan. This in spite of endless lobbying efforts from abroad, especially the United States, and World Trade Organization rules that attempt to stipulate that Japan should open its rice market (which would of course put local farmers out of business).

Photos from Pacific Islander ;) and Rakuten