Is Fresh Best?

Examining Seasonal Eating From a Logistical Perspective

When consumer values shift, so do supply chains. The global transport of food amounts to 3 billion tons of CO2 emissions. As a result, a concerted effort has been made to entice shoppers into purchasing locally grown and raised items and to consider seasonal availability when making food buying decisions. The rhetoric has no doubt contributed to a widespread value shift.  These days, consumers are increasingly in search of seasonally fresh ingredients

Even if it has nothing to do with CO2 emissions, freight logistics companies are pivoting to accommodate rising demand in the refrigerated section of supermarkets, which is directly related to the growing belief that fresh is best. 

But is it?

Fresh Produce Supply Chains are More Complex than you Think

Locally sourced, fresh food sounds great if you happen to live in regions of the United States that support the outdoor growth of fruits, vegetables, and even grass for the cows to graze on all year round. It sounds a little bit more limited if you live in Maine or Michigan, where growing seasons are fairly short.  Could we realistically feed the world this way, eating only what is grown in a single growing season and only what is available in our region? 

We couldn’t do it without doing what humans have done forever, preserving food so that it can be consumed later. Current demand for fresh seasonal foods, which involve very short lead times, requires different freight considerations. The moment a fruit or vegetable is harvested, it begins to perish. Their various supply chains are time sensitive and consider not only transport time, but shelf life when assessing how quickly food can be moved from farm to store so as not to put a retailer's profitability at risk.

Fruits and vegetables must first be graded for quality. It’s usually not the flavor that the grading experts are looking for, either. Color, lack of blemishes, size, and shape all play into whether or not the kiwi, spinach, and apple make it into the produce section. It’s not enough that it was grown locally and in a typical season; it has to also look fresh.

Seasonal Variables Can be Costly

If they make the grade, fruits and vegetables are cleaned and packaged before their trip to the supermarket. And, if they are not headed straight to the grocery store, they must be pre-chilled and stored in temperature-controlled units that delay the decay process but use energy and add to logistic complexity. Apples, for example, are harvested just once a year. An apple you eat in July could be ten months old. Rather than being frozen or canned, it is kept fresh by being deprived of oxygen and in a chilled environment.

Every fruit and vegetable has its own criteria for quality attributes and transportation logistics to ensure it arrives fresh. These differences add complicated variables to food transport. The fluctuations between the type of food, temperature, and distance of travel are ever-changing, particularly if we consider season-by-season availability of goods. 

Broccoli has a ninety-day harvest season while strawberries are lucky to get more than four weeks. It can be difficult to predict transport variables and juggle multiple harvest seasons. Efficiency demands predictability, and predictability is more elusive when it comes to fresh food than frozen or canned items. Short lead times can end up costing more money because freight companies, grocery stores, and even farmers must choose the fastest mode of transit rather than the most efficient. Or, just like planning a grocery budget can be difficult if you don’t know what you might find at the grocery store, running a supermarket can be tricky if you don’t know when or how much of a seasonal item will be coming in.

Fresh Versus Frozen

By comparison, frozen foods tend to win in the logistics category. Predictability is favored by both producers and retailers. Harvested fruits and vegetables that are frozen create less waste than fresh produce. They don’t require the same wasteful grading process. And, even consumers admit fresh items have a tendency to spoil before they can be used completely. And some data suggests that the energy used in freezing and storing frozen food is offset by the amount of food that is kept out of landfills.

Parameters for frozen foods are consistent. Pallets of differing produce can be transported in the same frozen containers, and because they can be frozen and stored for later, shipments arrive at grocery stores on time and in full, something that has strained retailer-farmer relationships when it comes to fresh produce.

If mangos are in season in Brazil and we get to enjoy them preserved at peak freshness in the U.S.  in states that are not even capable of growing the fruit, we could call it the ultimate seasonal selection. Yet, consumer values continue to view fresh and local, and seasonal, prompting supply chains to rethink the best logistical practices.