These global food supply chains depend on extensive transport networks, moving products from farms and aquaculture pens to distant markets. Trucks, ships, and planes carry produce, feed, and inputs across continents, consuming fossil fuels and generating emissions that compound the environmental footprint of food production.
A transport truck leaves Almería bound for supermarkets abroad
Salmon farming relies on complex logistics to move fish from pens in Northern Europe to markets across the world, with export volumes reaching millions of tonnes annually. Similarly, Almería’s greenhouses produce millions of tonnes of tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables each year to satisfy demand in Germany, France, the UK and beyond. In both systems, intermediaries treat food primarily as a commodity, focused on profit and efficiency rather than human nourishment, shaping supply chains that prioritise high volume and low costs.
This profit-driven approach shifts the environmental and social costs of production onto ecosystems and labourers, often in ways that are invisible to consumers. Carbon emissions from trucks, ships, and planes, chemical runoff from intensive farming, and exploitative working conditions all become hidden by the logistics of export. By prioritising trade and margins over sustainability and rights, these transport networks amplify the ecological footprint and social inequalities embedded in both salmon and vegetable production.
The long-distance transport of salmon and greenhouse tomatoes and other vegetables exemplifies the dynamics of globalisation and food imperialism. Products travel thousands of kilometres to wealthy markets, concentrating economic benefits in multinational hands while the environmental and social costs remain largely invisible.
Food is shipped across the world by vast road, rail, ship and air networks
Feed for salmon farms is transported across continents, combining wild-caught fish and industrial crops like soy into protein-rich pellets. Ships, trucks, and trains move these inputs from Brazil, West Africa, and elsewhere to aquaculture sites, embedding the environmental and social impacts of distant production into the logistics of global seafood.
Not only if food traded across vast distances, but also animal feed
The transport of salmon and greenhouse vegetables involves multiple layers of logistics, from local trucks collecting produce to international shipping and distribution networks. Each stage is orchestrated to maximise efficiency and profit, often at the expense of environmental standards and fair labour practices.
Thousands of platic boxes move products from farms to warehouses
Trucks take produce from greenhouses to be packaged for export
Organisations like CASI present themselves as community cooperatives, but in reality they operate more like monopolistic intermediaries, controlling prices and supply chains. This model channels profits to a few stakeholders while maintaining the appearance of local support, masking the concentration of power and the exploitation embedded within the system.
CASI is a tomato intermediary, shipping produce from thousands of farms
Food moves through intertwined networks of local and international transport, from small trucks delivering produce to nearby markets to large export vehicles shipping goods across continents. These logistics reflect food imperialism in practice, as distant markets, not those working hardest, capture most of the economic value.
Small trucks go from greenhouse to warehouse
Large trucks go from warehouse to foreign supermarkets