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Data

Share of global food miles by transport method

About this data

Source
Poore and Nemecek (2018) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 2, 2019
Date range
2010–2010
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Poore and Nemecek – Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers

Data is based on the largest meta-analysis of food system impact studies to date, from Poore and Nemecek's 2018 study.

The authors note the following about the scope of the studies included in this meta-analysis: "We derived data from a comprehensive meta-analysis, identifying 1530 studies for potential inclusion, which were supplemented with additional data received from 139 authors. Studies were assessed against 11 criteria designed to standardize methodology, resulting in 570 suitable studies with a median reference year of 2010. The data set covers ~38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products representing ~90% of global protein and calorie consumption".

A tonne-kilometre, abbreviated as tkm, is a unit of measure of freight transport which represents the transport of one tonne of goods (including packaging and tare weights of intermodal transport units) by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometre.

These emissions factors by transport mode are those applied in the analysis by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science. These emission factors are sourced from Ecoinvent v3.3, a comprehensive database which is commonly used in international life-cycle analyses (LCA). Emission factors can span a range of values depending on factors such as the efficiency of vehicle used; packing/loading density of freight; distribution between passenger and freight allocation in shared transport; amongst other factors.

Retrieved on
December 2, 2019
Retrieved from
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Poore, J., and Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992.

Data is based on the largest meta-analysis of food system impact studies to date, from Poore and Nemecek's 2018 study.

The authors note the following about the scope of the studies included in this meta-analysis: "We derived data from a comprehensive meta-analysis, identifying 1530 studies for potential inclusion, which were supplemented with additional data received from 139 authors. Studies were assessed against 11 criteria designed to standardize methodology, resulting in 570 suitable studies with a median reference year of 2010. The data set covers ~38,700 commercially viable farms in 119 countries and 40 products representing ~90% of global protein and calorie consumption".

A tonne-kilometre, abbreviated as tkm, is a unit of measure of freight transport which represents the transport of one tonne of goods (including packaging and tare weights of intermodal transport units) by a given transport mode (road, rail, air, sea, inland waterways, pipeline etc.) over a distance of one kilometre.

These emissions factors by transport mode are those applied in the analysis by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek (2018), published in Science. These emission factors are sourced from Ecoinvent v3.3, a comprehensive database which is commonly used in international life-cycle analyses (LCA). Emission factors can span a range of values depending on factors such as the efficiency of vehicle used; packing/loading density of freight; distribution between passenger and freight allocation in shared transport; amongst other factors.

Retrieved on
December 2, 2019
Retrieved from
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Poore, J., and Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of global food miles by transport method”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Poore and Nemecek. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Poore and Nemecek (2018) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Poore and Nemecek (2018) – processed by Our World in Data. “Share of global food miles by transport method” [dataset]. Poore and Nemecek, “Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers” [original data]. Retrieved May 11, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/share-food-miles-by-method.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

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