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<DIV>
<DIV>Hard to swallow</DIV></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>New research indicates that gas-guzzling cars are a much less
important<BR>factor in climate change than the huge amounts of food devoured
by<BR>carnivorous 'burger man'. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Jonathon Porritt on the geopolitics of food.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Jonathon Porritt<BR>Wednesday January 04 2006<BR>The Guardian</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>Of all the seasonal homilies about "green" Christmases and
"sustainable"<BR>new year pledges - an oxymoron if ever I've heard one - only
one stuck<BR>in my mind: each of us could make a bigger contribution to
reducing<BR>emissions of greenhouse gases by becoming a vegan than by
converting to<BR>an eco-friendly car.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Researchers at the University of Chicago have calculated the
relative<BR>carbon intensity of a standard vegan diet in comparison to a
US-style<BR>carnivorous diet, all the way through from production to
processing to<BR>distribution to cooking and consumption. An average burger
man (that is,<BR>not the outsize variety) emits the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes
more CO2<BR>every year than the standard vegan. By comparison, were you to
trade in<BR>your conventional gas-guzzler for a state of the art Prius hybrid,
your<BR>CO2 savings would amount to little more than one tonne per year.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>This may come as a bit of a shock to climate change campaigners.
"Stop<BR>eating meat" is unlikely to be the favourite slogan of the new
Stop<BR>Climate Chaos coalition. Even "eat less meat" might not go down
too<BR>well, even though Compassion in World Farming has produced an
utterly<BR>compelling explanation - in their report, Global Benefits of Eating
Less<BR>Meat - of why this really is the way forward.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The basic rule of thumb is that it takes 2kg of feed to produce
every<BR>kilogram of chicken, 4kg for pork, and at least 7kg for beef. The
more<BR>meat we eat, the more grain, soya and other feedstuffs we need. So
when<BR>we hear that the total global meat demand is expected to grow from
209m<BR>tonnes in 1997 to around 327m tonnes in 2020, what we have to hold
in<BR>our mind is all the extra hectares of land required, all the extra
water<BR>consumed, the extra energy burned, and the extra chemicals applied
to<BR>grow the requisite amount of feed to produce 327m tonnes of meat.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Only a tiny proportion of those recently alerted to the threat
of<BR>climate change would make any connection whatsoever between this and
the<BR>food they eat. These are two entirely different zones of
environmental<BR>reality - and getting one's head around climate change is
proving to be<BR>enough of a challenge anyway.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> Mass awareness</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>This year will undoubtedly be looked back on as the year when
mass<BR>awareness at last kicked in - largely because it's been such a
shocking<BR>year in terms both of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and of
the<BR>spate of new research findings about accelerating impacts on both
the<BR>Arctic and the Antarctic, on the Russian and Canadian permafrost, on
the<BR>acidification of the oceans, and so on.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It was also the year when the debate about how much oil is left in
the<BR>ground bubbled up again, with oil trading at more than $60 a barrel
for<BR>far longer than analysts imagined possible. The Goldman Sachs
prediction<BR>that oil could reach $100 a barrel within the next decade didn't
seem<BR>quite so daft any more.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The relatively imminent prospect of finding ourselves living in
a<BR>carbon-constrained oil-scarce world is, at long last, beginning
to<BR>impact on government policymakers. But policymakers in the
agricultural<BR>wing of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(Defra)<BR>may well be the last to wake up to this - even though the climate
change<BR>team is only just down the corridor. My Christmas reading included
a<BR>brave new Vision for the common agricultural policy (CAP), produced
by<BR>Treasury and Defra, presumably as part of their campaign to see
off<BR>Jacques Chirac and his legions of French peasants. All in all,
it's<BR>quite a good read, but the section on food security (defined as
"an<BR>individual's access to enough food to maintain a healthy and
active<BR>life") is astonishingly complacent.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As far as our government is concerned, it apparently doesn't matter
any<BR>longer where the food we buy comes from, as long as it meets
minimum<BR>food safety and animal welfare standards. If our big retailers
can<BR>source their produce from elsewhere in the world at lower costs than
UK<BR>producers, what's the problem? In a global economy, where food
is<BR>treated just like any other traded commodity, we may still need
farmers<BR>(for the time being at least), but we don't necessarily need them
based<BR>in the UK itself.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Many people believe the government has got this one badly wrong.
Food<BR>isn't "just another commodity", it is the foundation of
personal<BR>wellbeing and is inextricably interwoven into a nation's
culture,<BR>character and land use. In that regard, farming and food
production<BR>embody a set of skills and capabilities on which the long-term
security<BR>of any nation still ultimately depends.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>To demonstrate this, just add a few more geopolitical variables to
the<BR>pot - on top of climate change and declining availability of oil.
Just<BR>before Christmas, we heard that the Chinese economy grew by 16.5%
last<BR>year - almost twice as fast as official figures. Oil imports have
soared<BR>correspondingly, and will keep on rising. China is no
longer<BR>self-sufficient in food. As meat consumption rockets (from 4kg
per<BR>person 40 years ago to nearly 60kg today), so too do imports of
grain<BR>and soya. Competition for land and water has never been
fiercer;<BR>protests and riots over land use are now commonplace.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>At least China's population isn't growing much any longer, unlike
that<BR>of India and many other countries. We are on track for a
world<BR>population of around 9bn by the middle of this century - 6bn more
than<BR>in 1950. Massive increases in food production and in average yields
have<BR>just about kept up with population growth so far, but at huge cost
to<BR>the environment. And there are few agricultural experts who think we
can<BR>any longer sustain that kind of increased productivity.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Then start mixing them all together. When oil starts trading at $100
a<BR>barrel, what happens to food production systems that are
entirely<BR>dependent on cheap fossil fuels? How secure - let alone
economically<BR>viable - will today's global supply chains prove to be when
the worst<BR>effects of climate change begin to impact on food production all
around<BR>the world? What will be the impact on food production of more and
more<BR>governments using more and more of their land for energy crops
and<BR>biofuels in order to address the problem of climate change?
Worst<BR>nightmare</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Modelling these variables is a policy-maker's worst nightmare, but
they<BR>absolutely cannot be ignored. Unfortunately, they barely feature
in<BR>Defra's new vision, which seeks to persuade its readers that there is
no<BR>alternative but to accelerate the globalisation of the food
economy.<BR>"Complete self-sufficiency" is summarily dismissed, as if anyone
is out<BR>there arguing for complete self-sufficiency anyway. What they
are<BR>arguing for might be termed "cost-effective self-reliance", as a
hedge<BR>against the growing threat of widespread ecological and
social<BR>disruption - food security seen in terms of land use,
quality,<BR>sustainability and food safety, not just temporary availability
and<BR>access.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>And that means policies that do not leave our farmers
gratuitously<BR>disadvantaged by overseas producers who care little for the
state of the<BR>environment or animal welfare; policies that actively promote
local<BR>sourcing, obliging our retailers to be as smart and creative about
local<BR>supply chains as they are about global supply chains; policies that
set<BR>out systematically to reduce carbon intensity in food production
and<BR>distribution; policies that build on the excellent work already
achieved<BR>through the public sector food procurement initiative, and
the<BR>development of new agri-environment measures.</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>It also means a rather different vision, acknowledging up front that
a<BR>sustainable future for the UK depends on securing a thriving
rural<BR>economy, and that this, in turn, depends on keeping sustainable
food<BR>production absolutely at the heart of the rural economy. This may
come<BR>as a bit of a surprise to some conservationists today, but the
worst<BR>possible outcome for the British countryside and the global
environment<BR>would be further reform of the CAP - ostensibly in the name of
"more<BR>environment-friendly farming" - that resulted in more and more
farmers<BR>going out of business. Which is precisely why we need a much
more<BR>intelligent debate about food security than the one we're getting at
the<BR>moment. </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> Jonathon Porritt is programme director of Forum for the Future
and<BR>chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission. His
book,<BR>Capitalism As If The World Matters, is published by Earthscan
Hardback.<BR>He will be speaking, with Ken Livingstone, Monty Don, Caroline
Lucas and<BR>others, at the Soil Association's 60th anniversary conference in
London<BR>on Friday and Saturday. Further information at:<BR><A
href="http://www.soilassociation.org/conference">www.soilassociation.org/conference</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR>Copyright Guardian Newspapers
Limited</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>