Miles and more: A quantitative assessment of the ‘food miles’ movement

John Ballingall and Niven Winchester

No 331704, Conference papers from Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project

Abstract: One aspect of the climate change discussion that has attracted a great deal of media attention, particularly in Europe, is ‘food miles’. The concept that the further food has to travel, the worse its impact on the environment is one that – although flawed – is easy for consumers to grasp and for domestic import-competing food producers to support. We investigate the economic implications of food miles-induced preference changes using an economy-wide analysis. We find that welfare losses relative to GDP are largest in New Zealand and several Sub-Saharan African nations. Moreover, for some distance-preference change relationships proportional welfare costs are significantly larger in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere.

Keywords: Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Agricultural and Food Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/331704/files/3976.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:pugtwp:331704

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Conference papers from Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().