A US food miles paper, "Assessing fuel efficiency and CO2 emissions of two local food distribution options in Iowa", from a different angle published by The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University.
The purpose of this study was to determine which transportation option consumed less fuel and emitted less CO2: farmer delivery or customer pick-up of food products for an Iowa Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) enterprise. Findings showed that the delivery option using a Toyota Prius resulted in 2.77 times lower fuel usage and CO2 emissions than the consumer pick-up option using U. S. average fuel economy for passenger vehicles. However, if all the CSA customers who used vehicles for pick-up drove a Toyota Prius, farmer distribution would still be more fuel efficient, but only 1.35 times more than that of customer pick-up.
You can download other interesting papers from the Leopold Center website here.
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