It's a drop in the bucket compared to all the other resources used to grow and transport them. Agriculture is costly across the board. But I for one want my year-round access to every food on the planet.
> But I for one want my year-round access to every food on the planet.
I'd like to think you're being sarcastic here, but fear you may not be.
What's wrong with food being seasonal and local? Personally, I like it that what's available varies with the season; it gives me an extra incentive to try different things.
Besides, if the person really means it, they probably have no idea what "every food on the planet" means.
The result of industrialized food production and distribution has been a steady ongoing loss of food diversity. You can search for the stats from the FAO. I believe it's 75% of food diversity gone in the last century. 12 species providing for 75% of the world's nutritional needs.
The current system does not have food diversity as its goal, let alone taste or nutrition. It does a good job at nourishing the pockets of big businesses, that have an interest in turning all manner of food production and distribution into economies of scale by commoditizing (as in "commoditize your complements") the product. Uniformity and shelf-life win, farmers lose.
I've seen all this happen right where I live (Panama). Tasteless tomatoes, thanks to having Nestle as the main buyer. A local cultivar of Dioscorea (Yam) almost gone, when Frito Lay's told farmers what cultivar they wanted, which exposed the local cultivar to a disease. Countless edible plants and fruits, better suited for the climate and environment, have become simply unknown to people, as cattle farming took over thanks to the introduction of herbicides (it's also destroying the Darien rainforest, and violently displacing indigenous communities, btw). I could go on and on. Meanwhile, you have technicians (Ingenieros Agronomos) talking about such great achievements as tropicalized potatoes. It makes me think of the Great Irish Famine.
So there you have it, food from all around the planet, and the whole planet producing mostly the same. We are going full circle from abundance to scarcity. You have to then question people inferring rather unfoundedly that it is the abundance of food (along a sedentary lifestyle) what is driving the obesity-related chronic disease pandemic. You have to wonder what is abundance. Mindlessly following the commoditization trend has driven us to unquestioningly counting food only by such fungible measures as USD, kg, and calories, as if humans fed on food like cars feed on gas. And this brings us to that process that I think is parallel to the commoditization of food: the turning of humans into machines.