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Agricultural Sustainability Institute

Photo: Tomato trailers and tractor

Farm-to-Fork Energy Conference

Informational Documents

News Release

DAVIS — A three-day internal meeting at UC Davis will focus on finding practical strategies for reducing the greenhouse gases produced while putting food on our plates. Researchers, government officials and food industry representatives from Europe and the U.S. will work to formulate a program focused on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the food system Oct. 8-10, 2007.

“We want to a 'farm-to-fork' food and energy analysis program for California," said Tom Tomich, director of the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI) and the statewide Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SAREP), two of the conference sponsors. "One of our goals at the conference is to discuss the methodological challenges involved in food system research with our European colleagues."

Tomich said the gathering will produce a "food and energy white paper" outlining priorities for policy, research, education and outreach using what is called a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of various foods.

"We hope to learn from them and come to some consensus on how to do these calculations," he said. "Because California is a leader in energy efficiency and climate change policy as well as in agricultural production, there is a growing need for the University of California to increase its work in LCA research on food systems."

Gail Feenstra, a food systems analyst with ASI and SAREP, is one of the conference organizers.

A member of the UC Davis "Low Carbon Diet Project" team, Feenstra said her group is using the LCA methodology to calculate the embedded energy and carbon emissions for specific food items.

"Our team is starting with tomato paste, a much loved product in Yolo County," she said. "There are several sectors of the food system that use energy and create greenhouse gases—production, processing, distribution/transport, and then home preparation and waste. We are focusing on the part from production through to retail for now, but realize the rest of the system may be as much or more energy-intensive per unit."

Feenstra said calculating the LCA of a particular food means looking at its true energy cost.

"For tomatoes, we would look at the way a particular variety was grown. Was it raised organically or conventionally? How was it transported to market—by rail, truck, boat or air? The challenge is getting the energy/carbon emissions data for the various production and processing systems in each location and the transportation data. We also need to understand each distribution route. Does a tomato raised in Woodland go directly to Sacramento? Is the Imperial Valley tomato sent straight to Sacramento, or does it go through a circuitous distribution route and sit in a refrigerated warehouse at some distant location before being trucked back to California? How about the tomato from Mexico in January? We'd want to include the energy cost of refrigeration plus storage before it hits the grocery shelves."

In addition to the white paper, Feenstra said the conference hopes to produce a plan for comparative research across regions and continents, and a Web-based resource to stimulate similar studies.

In addition to ASI and SAREP, other symposium sponsors include Bon Appetit Management Company Foundation, UC Davis Institute for Transportation Studies, UC Davis Energy Efficiency Center, UC Davis Postharvest Technology Research and Information Center, UC Davis departments of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and Agricultural and Resource Economics. Partial funding was provided by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the California Food and Fiber Futures project.

For more information about the programs involved in the symposium, see:

Sponsors