Abstract

Agricultural and food supply chains in the United States are essential for both global and local food security, yet the transportation of agri-food commodities has received little attention despite being an essential feature for connecting production to consumption. Here we map the US agri-food distribution onto real-world highways, railways and waterways and also quantify the trade-offs between cost, path redundancy and carbon emissions of agri-food transit across transportation modes. Highways show the greatest path redundancy; relative to waterways, highways also cost 3 orders of magnitude more and emit 60 times more carbon. On the contrary, waterways show the lowest cost and emission levels, but path redundancy against transportation disturbances is 80% lower than for highways. Railways offer a middle ground on path redundancy, carbon emission and cost concerns compared to highways and waterways. Our findings can inform efforts to balance affordability, resilience and sustainability in agri-food transportation.

Reference

Karakoc, D.B., Konar, M. Trade-offs between resilience, sustainability and cost in the US agri-food transportation infrastructure. Nat Food (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01128-9

Read more here. See also the TABLE podcast series, Fuel to Fork, an investigation into the fossil fuels in the food we eat