"Food Mileage" is a product of two factors: the distance that food or animal feed travels from the site of production to the table, and the weight of the item. It is expressed in t・km (ton-kilometer). Generally, the longer the distance traveled, the greater fuel burned and CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. That generates a greater load on the environment.

In Japan, there is a saying, "Chisan Chisho," meaning locally produced food should be consumed in that local region. "Food Mileage" can be used as a measure of "Chisan Chisho." "Food Mileage" is of course related to "food miles," a term that does not include weight, and which was apparently first coined in 1994 by a consumer activist in Britain.

Data compiled in 2003 by the Policy Research Institute of Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries shows the following. In 2001, Japan imported a total of approximately 58 million tons of foods and animal feed. The total food mileage for the imports reached approximately 900 billion t・km, which is approximately 1.6 times the total annual cargo transportation within Japan. This shows how heavily dependent Japan is on imported foods and animal feed.

Japan’s food mileage is also very high compared with that of other countries; approximately 3 times that of Korea and the Unites States, about 5 times that of Britain and Germany, and around 9 times that of France. The population of the U.S. is 2.2 times larger than that of Japan. Taking that into account, the food mileage per capita of the U.S. is less than 15% of that of Japan.

The average traveled distance of food and animal feed imports into Japan is 15,000 km, which corresponds to the distance between Tokyo, Japan’s capital, and Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa. Besides the heavy dependence in weight, the exorbitant distance is another contributor to Japan’s extremely high food mileage.