Eating tropical fruits is not that eco-unfriendly
Adopting a fruit-diet can be frustrating when living outside the tropics. We just need those ripe, nutritious tropical fruits for health, but they come from such a distance that they arrive unripe and unsavory if not transported by air. But then, we don’t want to damage our planet… now here comes the unexpected happy end: they are not that bad!
While we all know that trees will save the world, tree-grown foods need to gain the deserved eco-friendly reputation they should get! More fruits, more trees, right? But let’s elaborate on why a fruit diet (even if based on imported fruits) is highly likely more sustainable than a standard diet.
I have asked an environmental and sustainability scientist: how eco-friendly are tropical fruits and air-imported fruits? Here is what she has found:
Sustainability Is Multi-Faceted
The environmental goodness of something is a function of the total resource use and net impact of each stage of the process of creating, preparing, delivering, and using that thing. Sustainability is a multi-faceted trait that depends on water, land, synthetic compound, energy use, nutrient loading, pollution, emissions, and waste.
Since each step in the life cycle of a food uses resources and creates impacts, determining the sustainability of any given food is complicated. Considering so many variables can make it difficult to determine which choices are the best for our personal and global health, but having many variables to consider can enable us to budget positive and negative impacts.
Sustainability Is a Spectrum
Since sustainability is multi-faceted, there are varying degrees of sustainability or unsustainability. The most sustainable food would be produced by doing everything right, and the least sustainable food would be produced by doing everything wrong.
It is much more likely that food production methods will include some sustainable and some unsustainable factors.
Sustainability Is Available
The sustainability of our food is less determined by what and more determined by how. Anyone food group or type can be produced through eco-friendly or eco-hostile methods. Even animal-based protein and dairy can be more sustainable than vegan diets when livestock is raised through sustainable methods, and plant-based foods are not. Conversely, a plant-based diet that includes air-imported tropical fruit can be more eco-friendly than a local omnivore diet.
In life sciences, optimal conditions tend to favor heterogeneity. It’s better to have a mix of a variety of animals in a community, a mix of genes in a population, and a mix of energy sources. Agriculture is no exception. Raising a single type of animal or plant will create a draw on the resources in that location, concentrate waste products, and increase the likelihood of problematic diseases/pests. That is why permacultures and food forests start to gain more attention.
In market situations, profitability tends to drive decision making, and profitability tends to lead to mass-production and resource/impact imbalance. Mass-produced anything—be it fruit, vegetable, or animal—is going to be unsustainable one way or another.
Environmental scientists have been studying “best practices” for producing food that optimize efficiency and minimize negative impacts, and the number of farming operations using those methods is increasing. More sustainable farms = more sustainable produce options.
Tropical Fruit Can Be Sustainable
Once you understand that sustainability is a multi-variable function dependent on the activity’s balance of resource use and impact, a spectrum of many degrees, and is dependent on “how” not “what”, you are equipped to identify your most eco-friendly options.
Keeping these principles in mind, here are 9 ways choosing sustainable imported tropical fruit can also mean choosing the environment.
9 Ways Eating Imported Tropical Fruit Helps the Planet
Land Use
Tropical fruits are primarily tree-grown fruits. Trees grow vertically, which means producing tropical fruit requires less land than the production of many other foods.
Biodiversity
Tropical fruits grown through agroforestry promote biodiversity by reducing habitat loss for native species, creating habitat for pollinators, and maintaining ecological connectivity. (Jansen et al., 2020)
Carbon-Fixing
Trees have vast carbon sequestration potential! Compared to shrubs and other smaller perennial plants, trees have a significantly greater carbon storage potential that increases with their growth. This means that planting the right species in their optimal habitat can help mitigate negative environmental impacts from global emissions and improve air quality. (Jansen et al., 2020)
Water Usage
Imported fruits and veggies use less water than production methods for standard animal-based foods. Since plants grow most efficiently in their native habitats, it is likely that imported fruits are more water-efficient than domestically grown versions. Using less water helps aquifers recharge and conserves energy.
Synthetic Compounds
Imported fruits need fewer synthetic compounds (pesticides, herbicides, hormones, etc.) to grow well. Since those compounds persist in the environment and wreak havoc as they move through the ecosystem, less is so much more.
Carbon Emissions
Air-freighting tropical fruit does cause some of the highest carbon emissions compared to other production and shipping options, but it does not cause the greatest net emissions.
Comparing air-imported tropical fruit to domestically grown tropical fruits shipping by road, the net emissions of growing in ideal climate and shipping by air are likely less than net emissions of growing in non-ideal climate and trucking across country (see this article at treehugger.com here).
This study breaks global emissions down into percentages by sector and provides comparison for air-freight and boat-shipping. Flying produced 1.9% of global emissions, and only 19% of that was air-freight (as opposed to passenger). So, air-freight emissions would be 0.361% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, shipping by boat produced 1.7% of global emissions. Generally, the carbon dioxide emitted by burning jet fuel has an increased negative impact due to its location in the atmosphere, but the impact of pollution from ocean liners is similarly compounded by direct emission to the ocean (see here).
Energy Use
Food production uses energy at each stage of the process. For livestock operations, energy is used to build and maintain infrastructure, cultivate forage, transport animals to market, process and package meat, ship to the consumer market, keep refrigerated, transport to consumer’s home or business, and to cook.
For fruits, energy is used to prepare fields, build and maintain any infrastructure, tend during growth, the process after growth, package, ship, ripen (if applicable), transport to the consumer market, and transport to the consumer’s home. Since the fruit process is simpler, there are fewer stages that require energy.
Water Cycling
Trees and forests are important vectors for the terrestrial transport and ground storage of water, and consequently, they influence precipitation patterns in the water cycle. Through this role, tropical fruit trees provide invaluable ecosystem services for water security and quality. (Jansen et al., 2020)
Soil Health
Tropical fruits grown in agroforest systems improve and maintain soil health, which negates one of the primary negative impacts of monoculture tropical fruit production: deforestation to plant in viable, non-degraded soil. (Jansen et al., 2020)
Sustainability is a choice!
The factors that determine how eco-friendly, wasteful, harmful, or helpful a food is are variable and sometimes complex. Consumer-willingness to purchase more sustainable food is critical to encouraging and facilitating the increase of sustainable small-scale operations. Tree-based food production using tropical fruit species has the potential to be transformative and integral in the restoration of tropical landscapes that are vital for the health of the global environment.(Jansen et al., 2020)
When you understand and purchase responsibly sourced produce, choosing imported tropical fruit can increase the sustainability of your diet.
You can choose produce that has been raised, processed, and delivered through “best practice” methods. Research the sourcing of your tropical produce, and buy from small-scale, agroforestry, eco-friendly farmers. Make periodic swaps for more sustainable options when feasible (fewer bananas in trade for more local paw paws).
Conclusion
While we all know that trees will save the world, tree-grown foods do not receive the eco-friendly reputation they deserve! Especially if you buy tropical fruits from small farmers (note that small farmers often do not have the financial possibilities to get themselves certified as organic farmers, even if they produce organically), or even better wildly grown fruits. We just love good News!
References
1 Ask Pablo: What’s the Impact of Imported Tropical Fruit? (treehugger.com)
3 Environmental Impact: Boat vs. Plane Emissions (treehugger.com)
4 Food and Climate Change: The Best & Worst Foods For The Planet (foodrevolution.org)
6 Sector by sector: where do global greenhouse gas emissions come from? – Our World in Data
7 the Water Footprint of Food – Water Footprint Calculator (watercalculator.org)
8 What Does Food Sustainability Really Mean? (ecoandbeyond.co)
9 What humanity should eat to stay healthy and save the planet (nature.com)
10 8 Sustainable Tropical Fruits & 3 To Avoid – Organic Authority
