Locally grown food has higher carbon footprint than imported products

London Sunday Telegraph ^ | June 3, 2007 | Richard Gray

[EPW Comm Team]

Greener by miles

03/06/2007

Conscientious consumers are being urged to buy locally sourced food in the battle against climate change. But, as Richard Gray discovers, produce from the other side of the world can actually have a smaller carbon footprint

Take a look in the average supermarket trolley and the food there will probably have travelled farther than most people clock up in a decade. A selection of just 26 items can have covered a total of 150,000 miles before reaching the British kitchen.

With beef from Brazil, beans from Kenya, apples from New Zealand, chicken from Thailand and strawberries from Spain, shoppers can enjoy year-round produce. But with such astonishing "food miles" being accumulated, it is little surprise that their environmental impact is coming under scrutiny and sparking a backlash.

Already, the major supermarkets are crawling over each other to highlight their "locally sourced" produce, while Marks and Spencer has begun labelling air-freighted products with logos of aircraft. Yet some startling research is emerging that shows food miles might not be as bad as consumers have been led to believe.

Analysis of the industry reveals that for many foods, imported products are responsible for lower carbon dioxide emissions than the same foodstuffs produced in Britain. Even products shipped from the other side of the world emit fewer greenhouse gases than British equivalents.

The reasons are manifold. Sometimes it is because they require less fertiliser; sometimes, as with greenhouse crops, less energy; sometimes, as with much African produce, the farmers use little mechanised equipment. The findings are surprising environmental campaigners, who have, until now, used the distance travelled by food as the measure of how polluting it is.

One study by Lincoln University, in New Zealand, found that 2,849kg of carbon dioxide is produced for every tonne of lamb raised in Britain, while just 688kg of the gas is released with imported New Zealand lamb, even after it has travelled the 11,000 miles to Britain. Researchers and farmers in Britain have raised doubts over the accuracy of the New Zealand figures, but they concede that sheep farming in New Zealand is more efficient than in our own country.

"They have slightly better weather," said Prof Gareth Edwards-Jones, from the department of agriculture at Bangor University, in Wales. "This means their grass can grow for longer and they don't have to give their sheep as much feed as they do in the UK.

"With meat in the UK, there is also a supermarket issue. Each of the supermarkets runs its own abattoir, so if you sell your lamb to Tesco, you have to send your lamb to Tesco's abattoir, even if you pass several local abattoirs on the way. As a result, the meat picks up a huge amount of 'in-Britain' food miles from farm to abattoir then to packaging before it gets to its final destination.

"If we could sort it out so that meat was slaughtered and packaged locally, it could make the whole process far more efficient."

On the extensive rolling fields of Pigeon Hills sheep farm, 40 miles from Nelson on New Zealand's South Island, the lush grassland needs little fertiliser to provide food for the livestock. Farmer David McGaveston, 55, rears more than 10,000 sheep and 500 beef cattle for export to the UK.

The style of farming in New Zealand is considered to be less intensive than in Britain because of the large areas of land. Mr McGaveston uses small amounts of hay to help supplement his sheep through the cold winter months and sends his lambs to be slaughtered and packaged at a plant just 40 miles away. Most of the electricity used is also supplied from a hydroelectric plant, which has minimal carbon dioxide emissions.

He said: "I understand the debate that is going on over food miles in the UK at the moment, but if we really are producing meat with less carbon dioxide then that is surely a good thing."

Figures from the Lincoln University study also revealed that both dairy products and apples imported from New Zealand had less of an impact on the environment than those produced in Britain.

Prof Caroline Saunders, who led the research, said: "Food miles are a very simplistic concept, but it is misleading as it does not consider the total energy use, especially in the production of the product."

But other studies of fruit and vegetable production have revealed a more complex picture. Research by the centre for environmental strategy at Surrey University has shown that British apples are better for the environment during autumn and winter, but in spring and summer it is "greener" to import them.

Dr Llorenç Milà I Canals, of Surrey University, said: "By May, apples harvested in Britain have been kept in refrigerated storage for more than six months, which uses a lot of energy. At that point, it becomes better to import from New Zealand."

He has also found similar results for the production of lettuces, which showed that the energy used to produce out-of-season lettuces in winter in Britain was greater than importing lettuces from Spain. He added: "If you are producing lettuce in a heated glasshouse in the UK, the amount of energy you are using is huge, so in that case buying British produce over winter is a bad idea."

Similarly, British farmers who grow tomatoes and strawberries often rely on heated greenhouses to produce crops outside the short fruit season in Britain. Dr Adrian Williams, an agriculture expert from Cranfield University, in Bedfordshire, said: "If you produce something in an unheated greenhouse abroad or in a field, you make a considerable saving, as you are not having to use large amounts of energy heating a greenhouse. You could expect there to be a difference even if you allow for the transport from Spain."

Earlier this year, Mr Williams revealed that growing roses in Kenya produces just 17 per cent as much carbon dioxide as growing them in Holland. Importing beans by air from Uganda or Kenya is also more efficient.

Prof Edwards-Jones explained why: "In Uganda, they tend to have small farms that export beans. They don't use tractors, as it is all done by hand, they use cow muck instead of fertiliser and don't use hi-tech irrigation systems."

For some products, however, it is better to buy British. British onions, for example, produce 14kg per tonne less CO2 than those imported from New Zealand.

What is clear is that the so-called "carbon footprint" left by a product is a good deal more complicated than simply looking at the distance it has travelled. Food miles have become the villain in the environmental debate over the global food market, with campaigners counting every mile their organic blueberries and sugarsnap peas have travelled.

But even the method of transport is generating controversy. Some researchers claim shipping is better than air freight, but others insist that for perishable goods, packing them into a plane for a quick journey is better than refrigerating them on a cargo ship. Air freight contributes just 0.1 per cent to Britain's carbon dioxide emissions.

The disagreement over exactly how to measure the carbon footprint of food has lead to the Government stepping in. Last week, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced it was developing a standard carbon calculator that all manufacturers and retailers could use to label their products. But a study by Bangor University, due to be completed this year, is set to complicate matters further. Researchers have found that the number of times a patch of soil is ploughed, and even the type of soil a vegetable is grown in, radically alters the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.

This could mean that clay soil in one part of the world may release more greenhouse gases than sandy soil elsewhere. Indeed, calculations of carbon dioxide emissions could also include the footprint left by employees involved in the production of food. Per capita carbon dioxide emissions in Britain are 9.2 tonnes, while for Kenya the figure is 0.2 tonnes and for Uganda it is 0.1 tonnes. By this method, importing from Africa would be far less environmentally damaging.

Despite this, supermarkets have been eager to demonstrate their commitment to British food with Waitrose, Sainsbury's and Tesco all running campaigns to emphasise that they buy much of their produce locally. A spokesman for Tesco said: "Transportation is only a very small part of the carbon emissions created by food production. We try to use food from local sources because our customers like it."

Yet many blame the supermarkets for creating the problem with food miles in the first place, by pandering to consumer demand for produce out of season. Dr Jonathan Scurlock, the chief adviser on climate change for the National Farmers Union, said: "Consumers are given the expectation that you can get anything at any time of year. Farmers feel there is an unfair flooding of UK retailers with imported products like lamb as a result. "

Anti-poverty groups, however, fear that a return to seasonal, locally sourced produce could end up harming the economies of developing countries. More than one million people in Africa are dependent on the trade supplying fresh fruit and vegetables to Britain.

Ian Bretman, the deputy director of the Fairtrade Foundation, said: "The voices of people from developing countries who do depend on exporting food must be heard. There should be a balance between environmental impact and the sustainability of a product."

Regardless of the carbon footprint issue, farmers on both sides of the world are united on one subject: the way that supermarkets are driving down prices. According to David McGaveston, the New Zealand sheep farmer: "The returns are not what they used to be and the price of lamb has dropped considerably over the past two years. It seems the price in the UK has stayed the same, but the supermarkets are paying us less for the meat. There are just too many exporters being played off against each other. It's not sustainable."

[Nathan Zachary]

It can only happen in the UK, which seems to have double the population of enviro-wienies. Go ahead, destroy your local farm industry you morons. The UK has been very entertaining lately, what with the rush of gullible sheeple running out to buy roof top windmills, spending thousands of "pounds" only to find out that
A) they don't work as claimed, and
B) They make a lot of noise mounted on roof tops, and
C) They have to buy electricity from "the grid" anyways.

Of couse, the day will come when the sheeple realize that they have to stick their windmills a lot further up into "clean air' for them to work properly, and UK towns and cities will become very silly looking with housands of tiny windmills sticking 100 feet above houses on flimsy poles supported with guy wires.

The UK court rooms will also see increased activity from lawsuits against windmill owners when the blades break off during storms and kill their pets and children.

[calex59]

It sounds like using slave labor would be the best option. Those slaves would consume less fossil fuel than machines and thus have a lower carbon footprint.

Oh, yeah, now the immigration reform bill is making sense,they just forgot to tell us about the "making them slaves" clause./SAR

[Dick Bachert]

Yes, we MUST buy MORE Chinese edibles. We MUST keep them happy with us or they'll shut off the flow of cheap plastic crap to our Dollar stores.

On a recent visit to China, a friend spotted this ad in a Beijing newspaper. He sent me the photo with a translation of the ad copy.

BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR AND JOIN CHINA’S NEW MONIED ELITE!

Yes, you can now join the millions of happy and prosperous Chinese citizens taking advantage of the growing numbers of American and Western multinational corporations “outsourcing” their production to the hard-working and industrious people of China. This outsourcing has now spread to their food supplies and ingestible items. Since these firms pay us for gross weight – and this new weight will be pretty gross – and the stupid American government only spot-checks imported items in these categories (they just got lucky on the anti-freeze thing), it has opened an entirely new opportunity which our beloved Chairman is offering to any Chinese citizen willing to do a little of what the foolish Americans call “grunt work.”

Installing one of these state-of-the-art food additive production facilities behind YOUR hovel is as simple as clipping the coupon below and sending it to the address shown. Your production plant will be shipped to you in 4 to 6 weeks. Supplies are limited so don’t fart around. ACT NOW!!

These silly Americans have an expression we have “borrowed” and modified to describe this new and exciting venture: “Don’t give me any s**t.”

Our motto will be “We won’t give any s**t. But we’ll SELL it to you fools at a really great price.”

[bullfeather]

smaller carbon footprint, but larger melamine footprint, larger death footprint. . get a grip
BTW. I smell B.S.

[P-40]

Yes, it smells like ‘Chinese damage control’ in high gear.

[generalhammond]

Has anyone noticed how the church of climate change insists that individuals sacrifice individual good for a supposed common good. Now what, and who, does that sound like?

[dennisw]

It sounds like using slave labor would be the best option. Those slaves would consume less fossil fuel than machines and thus have a lower carbon footprint.

Slaves fart, thus increasing the methane footprint and global warming

[P-40]

True, but we could make some genetically modified non-farting slaves. :)

[ThisLittleLightofMine]

You mean we haven’t already? /sarc

[ronnie raygun]

I personally have come to enjoy the pesticides (that were banned in this country) on the fruits and vegies from South and Central America and the antifreeze toothpaste and tainted grain from China. Lets lower the carbon footprint in the USA by importing all of our foods this way we will truely be a green nation, we will have saved the world and we will all be dead from cancer!

[BfloGuy]

Oh, yeah, we should just stop farming in the US altogether and let other countries supply us with food. Great idea!/SAR

Why did you even post that? It makes no sense and nothing in the article even suggested it. Or are you just one of the many here who read headlines and telepathically deduce what the posted article is about?

[xcamel]

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[Altura Ct.]

For real. Why would we want to be self supportive with our own crops in this coutry. Along with industry I think we should make sure America is dependant on only imports. That makes us stong!

[ChildOfThe60s]

The term "Carbon Footprint" is this week's winner of.....

[Robert A Cook PE]

“If we could sort it out so that meat was slaughtered and packaged locally, it could make the whole process far more efficient.”

Gee, did they try real competition for the food processing, instead of centrally-mandated assignment of packers?

[calex59]

Why did you even post that? It makes no sense and nothing in the article even suggested it. Or are you just one of the many here who read headlines and telepathically deduce what the posted article is about?

I posted it because the asshat writing the article was implying that we should import all of our food due to the lower carbon footprint of foreign grown food. Read the article again, perhaps you might get a better understanding of it. I would stick my head in the sand with you but it chafes my ears.

[Southerngl]

WTF? So now we are at the point where we are measuring ‘carbon footprints’ of our food???

Why don’t we just do like all good environmentalists want us to do a Jim Jones and have a mass human suicide so we can save the world. For... um for... well I don’t know why, but it really would be good for “Earth”. /sarcasm

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

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[dila813]

It would make sense that more cost = more carbon since a large expense is energy.

[GOPJ]

Don’t care...

Anyone have any idea how many trainloads of toxins the Chinese had to use to poison dogs all across America a few years ago?

Anyone think Radical Muslims won’t do the same to us if they can? Whatever it costs - I want American food...