I’m taking a history course this term, “Environmental History”. Despite the huge load of readings I need to do every week(well it’s history I should have knew what to expect), it is an awesome course and I love it! The course context covers 4 major themes, climate change, agriculture, energy regimes and cities; it discusses the dynamic transformation of both local and global environment, as well as how anthropogenic factor shaped and was influenced by the environment.
We are currently on the energy section, looking at how the domination of crude oil has changed human civilization and pushed our dependence solely on one energy source to an unprecedented level. We read one insightful article on energy use along the food production chain by Ricard Manning, and were ask to do a reflection on our food consumption over a 24-hour period. Discuss the role of oil in its production, transportion and packaging. Before I did my 24 hours recording, I thought I was pretty aware of that the global food production and distribution networks play a key role in our daily food consumption. However, after detailed recording and analysis, my findings still surprised me a lot!
The food items I consume within the day were a mix of local and international products. About one-third of the food products were produced within 100 kilometers. Half of them came from about 5000 kilometers away or even further. Also a few of them, mainly fresh vegetables, I had no ideas where they were grew! Huge fuel use on food transportation is not something new but it was still shocking to me while doing the “distance travelled” part of the graphic, I had to add a long string of oil droplets after mang food items I consumed.
The other major concern is the massive fuel use for food-processing no matter wherever it takes place in. In Manningʼs article “The Oil We Eat”, he states that “Agriculture in this country [USA] is not about food; itʼs about commodities that require the outlay of still more energy to become food.” Food processing is indeed an oil-draining work, given that one uses about 10 calories of fossil-fuel for every calorie of food energy it produces and meat productions uses about 4 to 7 times that!
What surprised me even more comes when I reflect on food packaging. I solemnly thought about our dependence on fossil fuel based material. But my food tracking list confronted me with harsh fact. Almost all the food products I consumed daily came with plastic packaging, and this was on a day I havenʼt had any take-out from restaurants or school cafes(those plastic boxes! PACKAGING!) Although I labelled “N/A” for all the unpacked fresh vegetables I had, I can see myself being very optimistic here because people tend to store unpacked food with plastic wrappings or in plastic bags. Living in the time of food consumptions being completely parallel with fossil oil uses, I can almost see myself going into grave with a plastic coffin!