Have you ever had that moment in the supermarket, most of the time in spring, when looking for British products?
Looking for the little Union Jack flag but instead drawn to the bright green beans of Kenya? Above them is a small black airplane. The supermarket has labeled this air freight, and you know it’s wrong, but you feel like your hand is reaching out to them. You’re sick of eating carrots and leeks all winter long; you want lovely squeaky green beans. Is it okay to put them in your basket?
A few years ago, I would have said no, absolutely not. The concept of food miles was all over the newspapers. I knew that the best way to reduce the carbon footprint on my plate was to reduce the distance traveled by food.
Then I started researching miles of food for my new book on the ethics of our fruits and vegetables, and discovered that it is not as straightforward as it sounds. The distance that food has traveled is not the only factor to consider when looking at the carbon footprint.
First, there is the mode of transportation. For example, a banana that has traveled thousands of miles from Costa Rica still has less carbon than air travel because it floated here on a huge container ship.
Second is the production method used to grow the food. A tomato grown in a heated greenhouse in Great Britain may still have more carbon than a tomato grown outdoors in Spain and transported by truck. Various reports, most recently the food emissions database produced with the UN and published in a scientific journal. Nature, have concluded that transportation is a small part of a food’s carbon footprint compared to emissions from waste and packaging.
Of course, air transport will always have more carbon. Even if we recognize that airborne fruits and vegetables account for less than one percent of food miles, for the few products that arrive by air, emissions are very high.
So the simple solution is to reject fresh produce that is shipped to Britain by air. Avoid food with those stickers that show a little black plane. I’d say this is the answer, but I was recently talking to the Farm Africa charity about a project helping Kenyan farmers grow green beans for export. Growing Futures not only improves livelihoods, but also helps young farmers grow crops in a more sustainable way, including solar-powered irrigation, the introduction of biopesticides, and a more diverse crop.
I did not dare to reject the foods of this plan and others like it because the green beans that are not sold in Kenya end up with the sticker of that plane.
Does that mean we should ditch food miles altogether? I do not think so. Eating local connects you with the seasons and the landscape, and is a good starting point for any meal. Even at the so-called Hungry Gap in spring, when British produce is low, you can find interesting things to eat like forced rhubarb and even forage foods like wild garlic.
Like many of the arguments surrounding climate change, the key to reducing carbon cannot be printed on a simple label. The best thing I could think of to replace food miles was a quote from the American writer and farmer Wendell Berry: “Eating is an agricultural act.” Perhaps instead of miles of food, we should consider the farmer who grew our food and how he did it, whether he is on his doorstep or on the other side of the world.
This column was originally published in issue 6 of Wicked Leeks magazine. You can read the full magazine for free on Issuu by clicking here.