Food miles, Kowalski’s and that steak on your plate

Food miles are one thing. The amount of fuel used per pound of produce is something else.

In other words, that steak you bought at the farmers' market from the family operation down the road might have taken more fuel to get to you than the rib-eye from a steer slaughtered in Kansas.

That's one of the interesting findings in a report produced last month for the U.S. Department of Agriculture by eight economists and academics, including several from the University of Minnesota.

Prompted by increasing interest in local foods and sustainable food networks, the authors of the report for the USDA's Economic Research Service set out to get a better handle on the many intricate ways food actually gets from farm to consumer. We did some reporting on the local food producers' co-op in Todd County earlier this year as one example of producers looking for new ways to connect with consumers.

The rationale of the economists' study was that a better understanding of these supply chains might help more local food producers figure out ways to meet a growing demand.

"One of the issues is going to be how can we really scale it up so more people can get access,'' says Rob King, professor of applied economics at the University and first author on the report.

The researchers created a set of case studies looking at blueberries in Portland, Ore.; milk in Washington, D.C.; salad greens in Sacramento; apples in New York and beef in the Twin Cities.

If you want to understand the complications involved in getting a piece of meat, whether you buy it at Kowalski's, the farmers' market or a restaurant, read the report. The beef discussion starts on page 35.

It compares three supply chains: Kowalski's on Grand Avenue in St. Paul; the SunShineHarvest Farm, which sells directly to consumers at a couple farmers' markets in Minneapolis; and Thousand Hills Cattle Comany, which buys from a number of producers and sells to supermarkets, restaurants and institutions.

The differences among the three are many, in terms of how much money the farmer gets to keep, how much extra work he does to sell directly to the consumer, how much information the consumer gets about the provenance of the beef, how much farmer-consumer connection there is and, of course, the road trip that any given piece of meat takes before landing on your plate.

Long story short: The steak in the Kowaksi's case may have started on a Montana farm as a calf and then been moved to southwestern Minnesota for finishing, taken to Kansas for slaughter by a company Kowalski's works closely with, boxed and trucked to a St. Michael, Minn., distribution center and finally distributed to stores.

That's maybe 1,645 food miles, the researchers conclude.

At the other end of the spectrum is SunShineHarvest, a family operation near Northfield. The typical supply path: the family buys a neighbor's calf, raises and finishes it, takes it to New Prague, Minn., for slaughter and freezing and then sells it to you at the farmers' market. That's 75 food miles.

But wait. SunShineHarvest is driving a pickup truck that carries three animals at a time. In the Kowalski supply chain, semi-trailers are hauling 40 to 55 cattle at a time and then 45,000 pounds of fresh meat.

The result, the study concludes, is that the direct sales chain uses 2.18 gallons of fuel to get 100 pounds of meat to market. The traditional mainstream supply chain uses less, an average of 1.92 gallons per 100 pounds of meat.

As it turns out, what the researchers call the intermediate supply chain -- Thousand Hills buying from regional producers, processing in Cannon Falls, Minn., and selling regionally -- scores much better on this measure than both other chains. Meat in that system travels 300 miles but is hauled in greater quantity than in the direct supply chain. So its system uses only 0.69 gallons per 100 pounds of meat.

The authors are cautious in drawing large conclusions, pointing to the many factors involved in evaluating local foods and the need for further studies. It's interesting to note that in four of their case studies -- apples, salad greens, milk and beef -- what they dubbed the intermediate supply chain used the least amount of fuel to get a given amount of produce to market.

That suggests that as interest in local foods grows, there's room for improvement and efficiency in the distribution network.

"How can we aggregate products from multiple producers and then get some transportation efficiencies," King asks.

Look for a lot more research in this area in the near future. King wrote about local foods going mainstream in Choices magazine. And the notion of "agriculture of the middle" is attracting researchers as well.

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