Food transportation issues and reducing carbon footprint

Transportation is the largest end-use contributor toward global warming in the United States and many other developed countries. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE 2009 ) calculates that CO 2 emissions from transportation surpassed two billion metric tons in 2007. Yet a survey by Golicic et al. ( 2010 ) fi nds that fewer than 10% of Fortune 500 companies have addressed the environmental impacts of transportation, and even fewer are actively implementing improvements, despite the fact that such initiatives would also tend to reduce fuel usage and costs in the long run. Transportation has a signifi cant impact within the food and beverage sector because food is often shipped long distances and not infrequently via air. Heller and Keoleian ( 2000 ) estimate that diesel fuel use accounts for 25% of the total energy consumed within the U.S. food system. Pirog et al. ( 2001 ) report that nearly half of all fruit sold in the United States is imported, and that produce grown in North America travels an average of 2,000 km from source to point of sale. Although the impact of transportation is important, full life cycle analyses indicate that for most foods transportation does not have the largest environmental impact. Some analysts, such as Weber and Matthews ( 2008 ) , estimate that given the