The BBC highlighted a very interesting topic today on their breakfast show. That is the issue of "food miles" in the food that we eat. In efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, it is a generally accepted fact that eating food that is produced locally is better for the environment because it does not have the same carbon footprint of imported food. On the face of it, that seems logical. After all, imported food has to be transported to the country of consumption and that transportation produces carbon dioxide. However, when looking into this issue in more detail, it would seem that simply saying that we should eat locally produced food is far too simplisitc at best, and misleading at worst.

To dissect this issue, we have to look at what is important here. We all have to eat food, that is a given. Surely the important factor when deciding what food to eat is the total carbon footprint from each food. This includes carbon produced from farming the land, growing the food, managing the food production process, processing the food and transporting the food. So one should not look at the transportation carbon footprint in isolation to everything else.

The BBC Breakfast piece made a comparison of kiwi fruit grown in New Zealand vs blueberries grown in the UK. We have all been lead to believe that we should consume the blueberries in the UK because of the lower food miles. However, as the guest on the BBC pointed out, New Zealand is very efficient at producing food because of the superior soil quality and ideal climate. Also, much of New Zealand electricity is produced from hydro power, which is one of the most carbon friendly methods. In comparison, farming in the UK is very resource and energy intensive. A greater amount of electricity is used, due to the less than ideal climate and lower soil quality. The electricity used is often generated from methods that produce high levels of carbon, like coal.

Another example is the production of tomatoes in Spain vs the production of tomatoes in the UK. Contrary to popular belief, there is a higher carbon footprint for a UK consumer to consume tomatoes grown locally in the UK. The reason being that tomatoes can be grown naturally in Spain with natural light. Where as in the UK, tomatoes are grown in greenhouses and use electricity to light them. Therefore, even with the food miles of transporting tomatoes from Spain to the UK, consuming Spanish tomatoes produces less carbon then consuming local UK tomatoes.

A recent study by one of the world's leading agricultural Universities, Lincoln University, compared the total energy used in food production in both Europe and New Zealand and included the energy used to transport the food from New Zealand to Europe. It stated the following:
"New Zealand has greater production efficiency in many food commodities compared to the UK. For example New Zealand agriculture tends to apply less fertilisers (which require large amounts of energy to produce and cause significant CO2 emissions) and animals are able to graze year round outside eating grass instead of large quantities of brought-in feed such as concentrates. In the case of dairy and sheepmeat production NZ is by far more energy efficient, even including the transport cost, than the UK, twice as efficient in the case of dairy, and four times as efficient in case of sheepmeat. In the case of apples NZ is more energy efficient even though the energy embodied in capital items and other inputs data was not available for the UK."

A further study released on 27th of July 2007 by Lincoln University found that in the production of New Zealand dairy products the generation of greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (all implicated in global climate change) - is less than in the UK dairy system.

The report makes the following findings:

• UK produces 35 percent more emissions per kilogram of milk solid than New Zealand
• UK produces 31 percent more emissions per hectare of land than New Zealand
• There was greater energy efficiency in New Zealand for the production of dairy product, lamb and apples than that of the UK.

This includes the carbon dioxide generated from transportation from New Zealand to the UK.

Professor Saunders adds "New Zealand’s efficiency factor in trade cannot be ignored. Our report clearly demonstrates the fallacy of using a simplistic concept like ‘food miles’ as a basis for restrictive trade and marketing policies. It is obvious that production systems and not transport are the major contributor to the differences in greenhouse gas emissions and energy use."

So it would seem that we are being misled by the media and the Government by being made to believe that always eating locally produced food we are helping the environment. As responsible citizens, we all have a duty to look into all of the facts surrounding carbon emissions. It may well be that in some cases locally produced food produces lower carbon emissions than imported food, but that is certainly not always the case. So it is advantageous for the environment to take into account the carbon emissions of the entire production and transport chain when deciding which food to consume.

Note: This article concentrates on a comparison between food production in New Zealand and Spain against that of the UK. There are many more countries that are deemed to be more energy efficient in the production of many foods than the UK, including Argentina, Australia, and Chile to name just a few. Further investigations will be made into food production in these countries at a later date and reported back here at Ecocentra.