Organic Food Miles? (Part I)
JUNE 14, 2007 - Here’s a tough question: should food that travels unsustainable distances be certified as “organic”? The organics movement aims, at least in part, to reduce the environmental impact of food production. To earn the “organic” label, food can’t be treated with industrial chemicals or be genetically engineered - for now, though, it can guzzle jet fuel on its way across the world to your grocery store.
The Soil Association, one of the United Kingdom’s most trusted and important organic standards agencies, is currently debating the question - and asking for your opinion.
For now, the association is focusing on air freight, the most obvious culprit in long-distance food. While air freight accounts for just a fraction of food miles, there are good reasons to give it a close look: air freight is the fastest-growing form of food transport, and has the highest climate-change impact per mile. While air freight accounts for less than 1% of the distance food travels to reach U.K. consumers, it is responsible for 11% of food-transport carbon emissions.
So kick jetlagged food off the organics list, right? Not so fast. The list of regularly air-freighted products currently licensed by the Soil Association is dominated by nations that don’t need another blow to their economies: Egypt, Zambia, The Gambia, Kenya, South Africa, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Thailand… Some of these nations, such as Zambia, are landlocked, with surface transport limited by bad roads and complicated border-crossings.
It’s easy to go knee-jerk on this one, too, and insist that richer nations have a moral duty to buy air-freighted food from poorer nations. Of the many arguments against this point, the most important is probably this: many of these poorer countries face the gravest risks from climate change. Check out this humdinger of a press release issued in November 2006 by the UN Framework on Climate Change. Just a few of the many concerns: fully one-third of Africa’s coastal infrastructure could be inundated by rising sea levels by 2100; climate change will increase many species’ vulnerability to extinction; 600,000 square km of usable land is predicted to become “severely limited” for agriculture (just 80,000 square km will improve); and more areas will see more frequent droughts on a continent where 95 percent of agriculture depends on rainfall rather than irrigation.
So does it “help” sub-Saharan Africa to support a variety of trade that increases the risks of climate change?
Meanwhile, studies have already shown that, under certain circumstances, food flown in from afar can actually be more energy efficient than, say, producing the food locally in a coal-fired greenhouse. (The Soil Association is also considering organic glasshouse standards.) Damn it, why can’t ecologically sustainable eating be simple!
Well, it can. In general terms, eating local, organic food in season is far more sustainable than eating global, industrial food. And no one’s communities - not in North America, not in Africa, not anywhere - benefit from having weaker, less sustainable, less self-sufficient local food systems.
Still, global trade has been around since the first nomads, and if the number of emails Alisa and I get that ask (with hopeful hearts) about “local coffee” is any indication, it isn’t going to disappear tomorrow. The question is how to make trade as harmless and fair as possible. In the case of air freight, the Soil Association sees three ways forward: (1) Continue to license air-freighted food as “organic”; (2) Phase out organic licensing for such foods over a few years; or (3) Impose a selective ban.
So which do we choose? Tomorrow: an answer. -JBM
