Don’t Mind the Food Miles
There’s been quite a bit of talk about ‘food miles’ lately but, as The New York Times points out in Food That Travels Well, walking-the-walk reveals a different picture. A group at Lincoln University in New Zealand, a country very keen to see food miles discredited it must be noted, conducted a life-cycle analysis of a range of products. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the scientists included water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs. These are just the sort of things we look for when Carbon Planet perform its emissions audits.
Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds [690 Kg] of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds [2,850 Kg] of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.
These figures are unsurprising. I draw some comfort in the vast scope we have for improvement in both the measurement, and reduction of our carbon emissions when inefficiencies of this scale abound. — DS
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