“…food miles is a measure of how far food travels – from paddock to plate – and is an indication of how environmentally-friendly it is. Food freight – especially by air and road – consumes fuel and energy, and releases greenhouse pollution, affecting the global climate.”
And, so, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) we should support the Tasmanian farmers in their campaign for country-of-origin labeling and buy Australian made, see http://www.acfonline.org.au/asp/pages/document.asp?IdDoc=2443 .
This seems to me like a rather superficial measure of the environmental friendliness of a food.
What about efficiency of land use measured in terms of tonnes per hectare of product? Condition of the soil resource? Quality of water in adjacent rivers and streams?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Plant food is CO2, so in terms of food kilometres (ACF remains in pre-decimal times) , as the result of transport freighting animal food, must affect global climate.
Gosh Vegans are guilty of global climate change.
Hell, we geoscientists can’t even explain the climate changes thought to have occurred during the hipsothermal, let alone predict next month’s weather.
And if you believe the above tripe, good on you, join the UN, its IPCC, to make your mark in the continuing story of how the credulous rush to here, and then there, in search of the impossible.
The ACF argument is too silly for words; resource managers are judged on their location to markets only. If I have a B-double of strawberries and divide the distance travelled by the quantity of strawberries and compare it to some local market gardener who has an old ute….
If consumers wish to buy local produce in preference to imported, well thats fine as long as they have a choice. Those tassie potato farmers will need to look at other markets, they should not expect the govt to restrict the market in their favour and deny the consumer the benefit of competition.
Growers/producers should be free to import/export goods; its the greens who want to restrict freedoms for the collective good (whatever that is).