Betting on local and, if possible, seasonal consumption can be a good way to help make a key sector such as agriculture more profitable and sustainable. And at the same time, eat tastier and healthier products.
Millions of tons of food travel around the world every day by land, sea and air, sometimes from remote places that offer us a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables at any time of the year. Of them we import more than 4.7 million tons in 2022. Spain, on the other hand, is the second largest exporter in the EU and fourth in the world in value (after China, the United States and the Netherlands): almost half of the 25, 3 million tons of fruits and vegetables crossed our borders, mainly to the EU, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture. It should be noted here that the global transport of goods represents practically a fifth of the total emissions of the food system, according to data from the European Commission. At a general level, between 80 and 90 percent of world trade moves by sea, about 11,000 million tons in 2021, four times more than the 2,600 million in 1970. Air travel is around one million tons, more than 650,000 which correspond to traffic outside the EU territory.
Apart from the high emissions that this activity entails (it is estimated that a large maritime transport ship can produce as much sulfur as 50 million cars), this transport of goods also has an impact on the price of food, due to logistics costs, storage, maintenance or distribution, to which other additional items such as packaging are usually added. It is the price of globalization, although we do not always have to go that far to get what we need.