The 100-Mile Index provides a statistical snapshot of our world’s globalized food system. The numbers are fascinating, troubling, funny and sometimes, just plain strange. Have a read and send them to a friend. Help grow this movement.

• Minimum distance that North American produce typically travels from farm to plate, in miles: 1,500
• Number of Planet Earths’ worth of resources that would be needed if every person worldwide lived like the average North American: 8
• Planets saved if all of those people ate locally: 1
• Ratio of minutes spent preparing food by English consumers who buy ready-made foods versus traditional home-cooking: 1:1
• Estimated number of plant species worldwide with edible parts: 30,000
• Number of species that currently provide 90 percent of the world’s food: 20
• Share of each U.S. consumer food dollar that returned to the farmer in 1910, in cents: 40
• Share that returned to the farmer in 1997, in cents: 7
• Ratio of prisoners to farmers in the U.S. population: 5:2
• Percentage of fresh vegetables eaten in Hanoi, Vietnam, that are grown in the city: 80
• Percentage of all tomatoes in U.S. that are harvested while green : 80
• Major river dams constructed to irrigate California, now the world’s number five agricultural producer: 1,200
• Number of years that Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon of Vancouver, Canada, ate only foods produced from within 100 miles of their home: 1
• Amount of potatoes, in pounds, that they bought for the winter: 100
• Days that that 100 pounds of potatoes would have fed a person in Ireland, on average, before the potato famine of 1845: 18
• Combined weight in pounds that Alisa and James lost on their 100-Mile Diet: 12

REFERENCES:

Rich Pirog et al., “Food, Fuel and Freeways,” Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University, 2001), p. 1.
Standard data estimate input into ecological footprint calculator, www.myfootprint.org
As above, with change only to food estimate
Brian Halweil, Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), p. 164
Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 287.
Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 287.
Halweil, p. 45.
Halweil, p. 45.
US Census 2000, factfinder.census.gov
Halweil, p. 94.
Halweil, p. 161.
Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water (New York: Penguin, 1987), p. 3.
California Department of Food and Agriculture, California Agriculture: Highlights 2005.
Larry Zuckerman, The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World (Boston: Faber & Faber, 1998), p. 30.