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Personal Action and Climate Change

Introduction

This unit looks at how what we eat has a direct effect on climate change. It also considers the importance of how our food reaches our plates, who controls that process and why this makes a difference to climate change. The unit also explores the positive action that individuals and communities can take to act for change.

Unit authored by Alissa Pemberton

Learning outcomes

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

  • build a basic understanding of the way the food we eat is linked to climate change;

  • provide a toolkit for making choices about what we eat that can help to reduce our carbon footprint;

  • develop an understanding of action on food that can be taken at a community level.

1 Food and climate change

1.1 Food miles

Most of our food travels great distances to reach us, which results in enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions with food being trucked, shipped and air freighted all over the globe before it reaches our plates.

For example, the average Sunday dinner clocks up the following:

  • chicken from Thailand, 10,691 miles by ship

  • runner beans from Zambia, 4912 miles by plane

  • carrots from Spain, 1000 miles by lorry

  • mange tout from Zimbabwe, 5130 miles by plane

  • potatoes from Italy, 1521 miles by lorry

  • sprouts from Britain, 125 miles by lorry

  • total, 23,379 miles.

That only accounts for the emissions from food transport. Large amounts of fossil fuel energy and water would also be used in the production of this meal.

It is estimated that if you made the same meal but replaced it with products that are in season and purchase them locally, then the total journey of the meal would be reduced from 23,379 miles to just 376 miles.

You can work out your own carbon footprint, including the food you eat, using the Resurgence carbon calculator.

1.2 Water and food

Much of the food we are used to eating also has a large water footprint. For instance, the production of 1 kg of beef requires 10,000–20,000 litres of water. In areas where water is already scarce, this can exacerbate climate change through the drying up of rivers and the destruction of habitats and local economies. Information on food's water footprint has been produced by the WWF.

2 What action can I take?

2.1 Sustainable food

It is clear that the relationship our food has with climate change is not just limited to how far it travels, but encompasses its production methods, its seasonality, how it is sold to us, what we do with any waste and many other aspects. Sustain, the UK's alliance for better food and farming, has come up with seven principles of sustainable food in a report entitled ‘Eat well and sustain the planet!’.

When you are shopping you could try using the following guides on buying sustainable meat, fish and eggs:

  • the Soil Association's consumer guide Buy Organic

  • Compassion in World Farming's Compassionate Shopping Guide

  • the Marine Conservation Society's Fish to Eat.

Happily, when these foods are produced sustainably, they often have far higher animal welfare standards.

2.2 Local food

Choosing organic food is a great start, but eating mainly plant-based foods that are in season and produced as locally to you as possible is one of the best ways in which you can really reduce the negative impact of your food choices.

A community in Fife has received global attention for their collective efforts to eat mainly foods within a 100 mile radius of their homes, and the writer Barbara Kingsolver has documented her family's attempt to do the same in the USA. Find out more about the Fife diet from BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme and the Fife diet blog.

2.3 Seasonal food

As a starting point, getting to know what is in season when, how food plants grow and what you like to eat is a great way to begin. Advice can be obtained from Eat Seasonably.

2.4 Growing your own

If you haven't got a space to grow some of your own food, or you have space that you could let someone share, a new network has been set up to connect you: the Landshare garden share scheme.

2.5 Food waste

A huge amount of food is wasted before it even gets to us. This is partly because of the purchasing policies of the supermarkets, who can turn orders of tons of food away despite production agreements. We also throw out 6.7 million tonnes of food in our homes that could have been eaten. The Love Food Hate Waste campaign has some great ideas for reducing the amount of food we throw away.

3 Taking action individually and collectively

3.1 Individual action

Food is one of the easiest areas to start making a quick yet effective personal impact on reducing our carbon emissions. We don't have to wait for the government to introduce legislation or for other people to start doing things; we can act right now with the choices we make each day about what to eat.

We can act alone and make a real difference, and by joining with others we can do even more. We can rediscover the positive experiences of acting collectively and reconnecting with others around us. Traditional food and farming has this social element embedded deep within it – the ‘culture’ in agriculture describes more than simply a scientific production of foodstuffs for humans, it is the life of both human and other creatures that is created, traded and celebrated. Getting back some of this fundamental wellbeing is a huge bonus that comes from trying to reduce our carbon emissions and, in turn, it can motivate us to go even further.

To be truly sustainable, our food must be produced in ways which uphold traditional farming livelihoods rather than supporting corporate agribusiness, which is driven by profit not regard for the ecosystem or indigenous livelihoods. This means that people like you and I who were not brought up to think that we might have a role to play in our food system have to start taking back some control. Supermarkets cannot do this even if we choose to buy organic and fair-trade food from them. This is because they work on the principle of a ‘race to the bottom’ through engaging in price wars that squeeze suppliers, making it impossible for farmers to invest in worker health and safety and environmental protection measures.

The author Barbara Kingsolver talks on the ethics of eating.

And Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall answers the question ‘What can we do?’.

3.2 Collective action

There are many ways of taking back some control of our food system, from acting with your family and community to eat more locally, to helping educate young people about food, to getting involved in ethical and community businesses that create real alternatives.

The Local Action on Food network brings together anyone who wants to work towards transforming the security and sustainability of our food. Its magazine Rhubarb gives a glimpse of the many projects and actions happening right now, from the Campaign for Real Bread to the Local Food Links scheme in Dorset, which is a community-based catering enterprise producing 3000 school meals a week using mainly organic and local ingredients

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is a way of reconnecting to our food and supporting the farmers who produce it. It is based on the principle of individuals, families and communities buying shares of the harvest up front, guaranteeing a fair price for the farmer. Many CSA schemes also involve a social element, with supporters getting involved in planning what crops will be grown and in some cases even helping to harvest or process foods. One of the earliest and most well-known CSA schemes in the UK is Stroud Community Agriculture.

Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) is a CSA network that links organic farmers and smallholders with people who want to learn more about farming and have new experiences reconnecting to the land. It is a non-monetary exchange scheme whereby, in return for help on the farm, WWOOFers are given food and accommodation. There are around 400 host farms in the UK and an extensive network all over the world.

The Transition movement is one in which communities all over the world are coming together to tackle the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil. Our food is often at the top of the list of how we can tackle these challenges. Not least this is because of its huge contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, but also because most of our food is produced using oil and natural gas – for pesticides and fertilizers, farm machinery, processing material for animal feeds, food transport and dealing with our food waste. Oil and gas are finite resources and vulnerable to fluctuations in global supply and demand, so tying our food system to them undermines the security of our supply. Transition communities are setting up food groups to bring local creativity to these challenges. You can see whether your community is already participating by consulting the Transition Network list of official initiatives.

If your community isn't already engaged, then you might like to find out how you could get some friends together to kick-start your own initiative by reading the Transition Initiatives Primer.

Activity 1

Explore these questions yourself or with family/friends:

  • Are you motivated to make changes to the food you eat following your exploration of its relationship to climate change?

  • What has motivated you most to take action? What holds you back?

  • Are you inspired to find out more about the relationship between food, agriculture and climate change?

  • In what areas would you like to deepen your understanding of the issues?

Acknowledgements

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Text

Unit authored by Alissa Pemberton

Unit image

Getty photodisc

Links

All links accessed 30 November 2009.