Checking the food odometer: Comparing food miles for local versus
conventional produce sales to Iowa institutions
by:
Rich Pirog, Marketing & Food Systems Program Leader, Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
Andrew Benjamin, student, Iowa State University Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture
209 Curtiss Hall
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011-1050
Web site: www.leopold.iastate.edu
July 2003
For more information contact:
Rich Pirog, Marketing and Food Systems Program Leader
Phone (515) 294-1854
e-mail: rspirog@iastate.edu
Abstract
Food miles are the distance food travels from where it is grown to where it is ultimately purchased
or consumed by the end user. The term food miles has become part of the vernacular among food
system professionals when describing the farm to consumer pathways of food. A Weighted
Average Source Distance (WASD) can be used to calculate food miles by combining information
on the distances from production to point of sale and the amount of food product transported. This
paper calculates the WASD or food miles for various types of fresh produce delivered to Iowa
institutions from local sources. The data is compared to food miles calculated from an
interpolation of conventional sources within the continental United States – the likely places these
products would have originated from had local food not been available. The average WASD for
locally grown produce to reach institutional markets was 56 miles, while the conventional WASD
for the produce to reach those same institutional points of sale was 1,494 miles, nearly 27 times
further. Conventional produce items traveled from eight (pumpkins) to 92 (broccoli) times farther
than the local produce to reach the points of sale. Research is underway to determine how well
consumers understand and value the concept of food miles within the context of their food purchase
decisions.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the following people for their contributio