Your Food Carbon Footprint

Dec. 14, 2009 - PRLog -- With all the current chatter about carbon trading schemes and global warming, it is easy to think this complex subject is just a plaything of scientists, politicians and big money people.

You can jump out of all this global warming noise, reduce your carbon footprint and at the same time contribute to a more sustainable food system.

Anecdotal evidence from studies in a number of developed countries over the last three years indicates that our food choices contribute up to 30% of our personal carbon footprint. Although the science around measuring food carbon footprint has a way to go, you can appreciate how this footprint is possible when you look at the results of a very comprehensive study done for Ceres Community farm in Melbourne, Australia during 2008. The study examined all the contents of a normal family shopping basket for one week and found the contents had travelled 70,000 kilometres. That’s one family for one week!

For most people, their food carbon footprint is higher than any other personal source such as, energy or travel. So having solar power, getting a hybrid car or reducing your air travel is great, but the main game is food and yet where is the conversation about the impact of our food choices on global warming?

The local food and grow your own movement is going forward in leaps and bounds around the world as the communities move past all the chatter on climate change. I am not taking a position for against the statements about climate change here, but simply stating that a small but growing proportion of the general public around the world is already realising that by changing their own food systems, they lower their footprint on the planet.

It is quite likely that many of these people don’t see growing their own or buying more local food as a primary motivation for reducing their carbon footprint. They are more likely to be attracted by the other benefits which are: tastier and fresher food, better health, stronger local communities, greater diversity in food, more personal and community resilence to any change that may occur and more certainty over food costs.

So they are reducing their carbon foot print without even thinking about doing it and gaining lots of other benefits. When you think about the arguments around carbon trading schemes and their radical complexity, you have to scratch your head about why humans make obvious things so complicated. Surely it is obvious that we don’t need huge houses that are barely lived in, enormous cars or all that other stuff. Scientists are turning the story of over consumption into something beyond our intellectual grasp and yet the answers are right in front of us each day.

This ‘complexity turning into nonsense’ way of looking at things is also prevalent in the context of farming. We have lots of talk on technology being the solution to climate change and yet in a recent story in the Organic Federation of Australia magazine, it was quoted that if USA farmers built humus levels in their soil by 0.75% with healthier organic farming practices, this would consume 50% of all carbon emissions in the USA, let alone all the other benefits. That is a truly massive proportion from the world’s biggest carbon emitter. Imagine what these statistics would look like for Australia with its relatively low population and very high agricultural output.

I would prefer the whole climate change conversation moved towards transforming our food systems to organic and more local. Just imagine the multi-layered beneficial impact compared to a carbon trading scheme that does not discourage polluters to do less polluting if they simply pass the cost of carbon credits onto their customers. This kind of one-sided economic logic to use the traditional market forces to make polluters more environmentally responsible is the same narrow dog-eat-dog logic that created the problems in the first place.

But have no fear, the growing band of people who want to grow their own, eat local and consume less of all the other stuff are chipping away at the edges of a fraying system which will be transformed into something more sustainable. It will be a bumpy ride for us all, but we will find a way, as it is really in our hands to transform it. Ultimately, the politicians, scientists and big business will follow us. Expecting them to lead and blaming them if they don’t is falling into their trap.

Peter Kearney – www.cityfoodgrowers.com

Cityfood Growers provides city dwellers with easy access to localised knowledge on more productive organic food gardening.

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Cityfood Growers provides home gardeners with easy access online to localised knowledge on growing their own food with organic gardening methods. Gardening workshops, urban agriculture consulting and food gardening content for schools also provided.