miles and miles of food miles
Food miles have hit the headlines again, this time infuriating our vintners. Here’s the document at the centre of that argument (which follows closely on a similiar slight to NZ wine in the Observer).
It seems though that the concept is getting more sophisticated with the intimation that UK food miles labelling will not simply be based on air freight distance - how items have been produced will also be part of the measure of the carbon footprint. Here’s the research from Lincoln Uni which used to pick holes in the British criticism of our exports last year.
The food miles vs. organic argument is coming up more and more now too, and it’s a jolly interesting one. Frog’s heard that some in the organic movement here are reluctant to endorse buy local campaigns for fear of being seen as protectionist…
June 1st, 2007 at 6:08 pm
It’s good to see that the calculation of food miles is getting more sophisticated and is including the whole production and distribution chain.
The average exotic sports car actually has a smaller carbon footprint than a hybrid car simply because they are too impractical to be used for everyday transport therefore their higher fuel consumption is offset several times over by their lower annual mileage.
Of course, the same argument would apply for hybrids and off-roaders provided the off-roader is only being used for off-road use.
Of course, this assumes they are all owned by one person rather than a family of drivers.
June 2nd, 2007 at 11:31 am
Can I just point out that it was Hot Topic that broke this story? Not that I’m blowing my own brass instrument, of course…
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:53 pm
How many people will really take an interest in where the food comes from?, I could not care how many “food Miles” it has traveled, if it is what I want I will purchase it.
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I care. I’d really like to see products labelled with info about carbon footprint, if possible.
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:52 am
Really?, I want food that tastes good not some cheap local imitation.
Take Parmesan cheese for example, the local stuff is rubbish, I only buy Parmesan imported from Europe, i am not about to change just because it traveled here by jet.
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:35 am
The whole “food miles” debate is a smokescreen. It doesn’t matter how far the food has travelled to get here, what matters is how energy efficient the process is. For example, it’s more energy efficient for alaska to import bananas than it is for them to grow the bananas themselves. The same goes for our meat exports to Britain.
But BB, your basically saying screw the environment, me having what I want is more important than it. Whats your justification for that view?
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
davey
I do not have to justify anything as I know that the whole global warming thing is a con.
Do you know that Greenpeace will no longer debate the issue of climate change, they say that they do not have the time to discuss the issue with climate change deniers.
Sounds to me that they can no longer argue against the avalanche of evidence proving climate change to be a con.
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Or that they’ve had to make their argument to so many different people so many times that they just can’t be bothered anymore? And Greenpeace is hardly the only environmental group out there.
As for the “avalanche of evidence proving climate change to be a con”, well to quote Homer S, “Oh, facts. You can prove anything with those.”
Both sides can claim they have the evidence on their side, due to the lack of consensus among high-level scientists and by cherry-picking quotes and data to support their theories. Myself, I think it’s better to be safe than sorry.
June 3rd, 2007 at 2:17 pm
davey
If they truly believe that this global warming con is the number one problem facing the world then they should be ready and willing to debate anybody at anytime.
I suspect that the reluctance to do so stems from the fact that they know their argument just does not stack up.
However I suspect that the real reason environmental groups are reluctant to debate the climate change issue is that they want the public to go on believing this rubbish, they know full well that if the public actually do learn that it is a con their hidden agenda will be exposed.
June 3rd, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Their hidden agenda? Which would be? In any case, I sincerely doubt that there is anyone that doesn’t have a hidden agenda. No-one is completely open, we all keep secrets from people.
June 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 pm
BB - Greenpeace has no doubt decided where to allocate its resources. I would expect such decisions to be based on factors like efficiency and effectiveness. I am glad to see that Greenpeace is getting on with achieving good work for the environment.
And BB - we see that you consider quality of products in your purchase decisions. Carbon footprint is another factor that consumers may increasingly wish to consider in their purchase decisions.
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Prim
And that is exactly why I no longer donate to Greenpeace.
June 5th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Food miles is the latest trendy fad in the UK, being orchestrated by the highly protected farming sector to justify the exclusion or demonisation of products from other countries purely on the basis that “buy UK is more eco friendly”, when in many cases it is not. This isn’t just a small scale idea, it has coverage in all major newspapers and the BBC throws around the concept willy nilly with no thought - and the consequences of this for the NZ farming sector (and economy) are considerable, and largely neglected in NZ. The effects on the environment are clearly negative as well, despite people’s best intentions, so for BOTH these reasons ought to motivate the Greens to push the questioning of food miles hard.
Remember also that the carbon footprint of food production ignores the methane footprint (which may be more important than CO2 in “greenhouse gas” terms), and no one is going to accurately measure the footprint of transport goods (because it will vary according to where you buy).
LS
June 5th, 2007 at 1:25 am
libertyscott,
The Lincoln University study (linked in frog’s original post) identified a rather obvious flaw with the food miles argument. Emmisions and energy consumption per tonne/km are lower with larger vehicles than smaller ones (except aircraft). A European taking their groceries home from a local market in a hatchback can use as much energy as trucking or railing those groceries from another European country or shipping them from NZ or South America. The need for cool stores, winter feed production or heated greenhouses will also make European produce more energy intensive than produce grown in temperate or tropical climates.
June 5th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Food miles is “buy local” via protectionism. I’m pleased a good deal of people on the Left have recognised localisation is the road to poverty, particularly for New Zealand. Trade matters more when the local market is small.
Greens, I suspect, disagree with socialists on the merits of food miles. It could be an issue that really splits Labour from Greens. So food miles isn’t all bad.
June 5th, 2007 at 11:37 pm
mattb02 said: Greens, I suspect, disagree with socialists on the merits of food miles. It could be an issue that really splits Labour from Greens.
So when were Labour last socialist. About 1949, by my reckoning. Food miles are absolute rubbish, if there is less of a greenhouse gas emission impact from importing something than there is from making it here, then we should import it.
But I guess you are right on one thing Matt - probably the greates disagreement the Greens have with Labour, and with National for that matter, is on trade policy. Greens support fair trade - not so-called free trade. But we’re not going to get anywhere with either of those parties, or with the minor parties for that matter, on that issue unless we significantly increase our representation in Parliament - another good reason to vote Green.
June 6th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
I tend to agree with Matt here - ensuring that products pay the true cost of their transportation to markets is the key to tackling emissions.
Subsidised transport inevitably hurts local manufacturers, by allowing big companies to develop huge logistic networks. These networks are optimised to move around the country, thereby undermining local production. Really the best thing for local production would be for road transport [particularly heavy vehicles] to pay their own way.
Long running subsidies for roads may mean that short term subsidies for rail are required, but these should be designed only as bridging finance to get the network operable.
Let transport be self-funding and the market will do the rest.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:02 am
Stu,
You are correct that subsidised transport inevitably hurts local producers. And this has always been true, for any and every mode of transport. In the 1860s the subsidised railways killed off coastal shipping. Of course, the lack of compensation to the families of drowning victims was a defacto subsidy to coastal shipping that was used as an excuse for govt gauranteed loans to the provincial railways.
The Surface Transortation Cost Comparison has two serious flaws:
1. it excludes indirect taxation (GST) yet includes indirect costs to the consolidated account.
2. it makes some extraordinary claims about the capital value of roads to determine return on capital councils and government should be earning from roads.
As far as external costs are concerned, the study uses conservative estimates of these costs but it is even more conservative when estimating external benefits (it claims investment in roads produces no benefits, external or internal). I would give this study as much credence as a Transit study of Transmission Gully;)
As far as direct roading costs are concerned the financial statistics for the last 80 years don’t show any evidence of cars subsidising trucks. But it does show that ratepayers are subsidising taxpayers simply because State Highways receive full funding from motor-taxation but local roads do not, even though RUCs are the same on local and state roads.
The only real long running subsidy for roads is our tollerance of appallingly dangerous (cheap and nasty) roads, and not demanding that road and rail bridges meet the same seismic standards which is a major cost saving for road freight.
The biggest transport subsidy is the absence of tax on aviation and marine fuel even when used domestically.
June 7th, 2007 at 5:17 am
Rail has been subsidised continuously since 1972, to a greater or lesser degree.
Kevyn, the exclusion of GST actually makes sense as GST is a universal tax, not a tax to pay for externalities. The bigger flaw is that nobody has done a study of negative AND positive externalities for all human activities, rather than picking on transport. The capital value of roads issue is nicely segregated into recoverable and non-recoverable costs.
STCC is robust, but the Greens, AA, RTF and TollRail will all use it to support their own conclusions. The truth is that it provides information from which policy can be derivated, it does NOT support massive increases in road charges, or rail subsidies.
Of course, once again, the answer is to allow road pricing so that marginal costs can be reflected in charges. This will mean some road charges drop and others increase.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:28 am
libertyscott, I agree with your conclusions and general comments.
“GST is a universal tax, not a tax to pay for externalities.” In the STCC externalities are external to roadusers. However when this results in actual spending by the government then these costs have actually been internalised into the government accounts, at that point universal taxation becomes relevant. That is why I consider it an error to exclude GST. Mind you, if you are right ten the STCC should have excluded the consolidated petrol tax and traffic fines as neither of these is levied to recover extrenality costs, or at least that was what Ministers of Finance and Transport always claimed before the STCC was published.
The method they chose for calculating the capital value is quite odd, and essentially cirurlar.
They could simply have calculated the actual capital invested using the Department of Transport’s estimate for the period 1870-1929 (DoT first annual report to Parliament in 1930) and added the amounts from the road fund and local authorities (Main Highways Board/National Roads Board/Transit/Transfund annual reports) then allowed depreciation at the relevant rates calculable from the physical works statistics in the same annual reports. This produces an estimated capital value between $b15 and $b25. Instead of doing this they valued roads at their replacement land value based on the value of abbutting land, and allocated the entire return on capital to road users.
The obvious problem with this is that land with immediate road access has higher value than land remote from roads. Therefore removing the roads removes much of the land value thus removing much of the capital value of the roads if the land occupied by roads could in fact be used for some purpose other than roads as the STCC argues. Most land owners would probably be a bit miffed if their roads disappeared.
Worse still, road users are not legally allowed to use much of the roading reserve therefore the return on capital would have to come partly from ratepayers. Each of the foregoing individually eliminates the underfunding that the STCC identified.
Of course, we could simply accept the findings of the STCC and simply take it a step further and disaggregate the various statistics regionally or by TLAs and then watch the fur fly.
To reiterate, we are in full agreement with your conclusions and recommendations, it is only the STCC where we disagree. You think it is robust, I think it is a house of cards.