Counting the food miles of sugar in early colonial Australia

Abstract Food miles is a concept developed in the 1990s as a critique of the negative social and environmental consequences of transporting foods over very long distances. While intended to draw attention to a contemporary problem, the movement of food has a long history to which the concept of food miles can be usefully applied. Drawing upon government correspondence, statistics and personal journals, this article investigates the significance of food miles in establishing the colony of New South Wales, Australia, between 1788 and 1800, with a particular emphasis on sugar. While the some of the issues noted at the end of the twentieth century were present, other factors, such as the high costs of transport, associated waste, and food security were of greater concern to those provisioning the colony and led them to seek to reduce food miles by purchasing supplies in the region. However, other priorities, including preferences for familiar foods and for restricting trade to within the British Empire, created a countervailing pressure which kept food miles very high throughout the period under consideration. This study shows that long before the terminology was coined, food miles played a role in decision making around food supplies and invites the application of the concept to other historical periods.