Only 2% of impact due to transport from farm to shop
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 foods 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.
Source: The Guardian
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