We need 1.) more travel distance labels that show where things are from, while 2.) at the same time showing how much of the costs are government subsidized, as well as the emissions generated by the transportation costs.
Of course we need corresponding shifts, e.g. in helping communities learn how to cook with seasonal vegetables etc.. Living in the Netherlands, I don't need to eat asparagus from Peru in December.
But yeah, like in the airline and oil industries, it's the use of subsidies that's one of the root problems (although we all know that the US military industrial complex alone is one of the biggest polluters [1]).
We need more signaling systems that show the real costs; not to shame the working class who buy food (or pretend they have any real power to effect change), but to help reveal to them the wastefulness and destruction of the current system.
"Many urbanised people have lost touch with the sources of their food, and may not realize that the distance their food travels has been steadily increasing. In the US, the average pound of food now travels 1,500 miles before it reaches the dinner table, and the distance continues to grow.
Much of this transport is needless: every day, identical commodities pass in opposite directions, criss-crossing the globe. The ‘logic’ of the global economy leads the US and other nations to import hundreds of thousands of tons of staple foods each year, while simultaneously exporting roughly the same amount. In an era of dwindling fossil fuel reserves and rising CO2 emissions, this is both senseless and wasteful. But it is a trend that is accelerating as governments systematically promote a single, globalized food system."
- Helena Norberg Hodge [2]
[1] https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than...