While this is hardly the last word on local vs from anywhere else food purchases, it offers much to think about as we consider our food choices. Tony Del Plato Ithaca NY
Focus on 'food miles' is too narrow, say researchers 'Only 2%' of impact due to transport from farm to shop The Guardian June 4, 2007 Consumers need more information about the environmental impact of the food in their shopping basket if they are to make eco-friendly choices, according to researchers who have carried out a detailed analysis of the ecological costs associated with food. They argue that the focus on "food miles" is missing the bigger picture and may be counter-productive. Food stores such as Tesco and Marks & Spencer have said that they will label products that have been transported by air. But according to the researchers, only around 2 percent of the environmental impact of food comes from transporting it from farm to shop. The vast majority of its ecological footprint comes from food processing, storage, packaging and growing conditions. So food grown locally could have a considerably bigger footprint than food flown halfway around the world, and consumers who make their choices on air miles alone may be doing more environmental harm, according to the scientists. "I'm a bit worried about the food miles [debate] because it is educating the consumer in the wrong way. It is such an insignificant point," said Ruth Fairchild at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff. "Those [foods] could have been produced using pesticides that have traveled all the way around the world. If you just take food miles, it is the tiny bit on the end." A better system, she argues, would be one that considers all environmental impacts from farm to dinner plate. One option is ecological footprint analysis, which takes into account the amount of land needed to provide the resources to produce food, both directly on the farm and indirectly from the energy that goes into growing, harvesting, processing, packaging and transporting it. A food's impact is measured in "global hectares", the notional land area needed to produce it. But she thinks that consumers are not yet ready for ecological footprint labeling and the science behind it is not yet watertight. To help confused consumers, Dr Fairchild and colleague Andrea Collins at Cardiff University have used the ecological footprint concept to develop a set of eco-diets designed to minimize the impact of food consumption on the planet. Sticking to the diets does not mean eating lentils all day, but the most eco-friendly diet excludes wine, spirits, chocolate, ice cream and most meat. The study is published in the journal Sustainable Food Consumption. The diets are based on an analysis of the ecological footprint associated with the food consumed by the average Cardiff resident in a week. The three diets are progressively more austere in their ecological footprint, with the most ascetic allowing only foods with a footprint of less than 0.002 global hectares per kilogram. This meant replacing around one in six food items with less eco-profligate fare, which had a similar nutritional makeup. This diet has a 40 percent lower ecological footprint than the typical Cardiff diet. Most meat is pushed out of the super-eco-diet because feeding livestock is energy intensive. Cheese is also out because of the large amounts of energy that go into processing it and refrigerating it in storage. The footprint for wine is just too high, while sprits and chocolate have a per kilogram footprint which is around double the cut-off point. Bread, vegetables, cakes, biscuits, eggs, pork, ham, bacon and milk are all acceptable. <blocked::http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june07/foodfears_06 -01.html> "Eaters must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." Wendell Berry _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
