The Energy Costs of eating ORGANIC FOOD

Imports of organic food into Scotland and the United Kingdom are
Ruining the Environment, according to a report, titled: "Eating Oil:
Food Supply in a Changing Climate," recently issued by Scotland's
Sustain, an alliance for better food and farming that was formed in June
1999 by the merger of The National Food Alliance and the Sustainable
Agriculture Food and Environment (SAFE) Alliance.

The report examines how far food travels and UK's dependency on imports
and on fossil fuels to produce, process, package and distribute food.
According to a May 5 Scottish Sunday Herald News Report, " ... The report
takes a comprehensive look at how far our food travels and our dependency
on imports and on fossil fuels to produce, process, package and distribute
food ...".

Transporting organic onions from New Zealand, apples from the
US, broccoli from Guatemala and butter from Denmark by air, sea and road
spews thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the air.

The huge distances that organic produce has to travel to reach the British
market is a 'long-standing absurdity', according to a report by Sustain,
an alliance of 86 environment, food and trade union groups. It calculates
that a basket of 26 organic items could have collectively travelled more
than 241,000 kilometres -- the equivalent of six times round the equator.
The amount of carbon dioxide released by all the planes, boats and lorries
just to transport that one basket would total nearly 82 kilogrammes. By
the time the basket has been driven home from the shops, it would have
caused as much pollution as a four-bedroom household creates by cooking
for eight months.

Environmental campaigners have seized on the figures to step up their
demands for ministers to back a Scottish Organic Targets Bill. Due to be
introduced by MSPs as a private bill in the next couple of months, it is
aimed at increasing the area of land in Scotland used for organic
production from 6% at present to 20% over the next 10 years ... The
globalisation of the food market also means that far more energy is used
to move food around than humans can ever gain by eating it.

For example 127 calories of fuel are used to fly in every calorie of
iceberg lettuce from Los Angeles. Pollution would be dramatically cut if
more food was grown, sold and eaten locally, the report contends. For
instance, buying locally-grown spring onions via a home delivery box
scheme would emit 300 times less carbon dioxide than if they were flown in
from Mexico and brought home from the supermarket by car ..."  

The "Eating Oil" report is posted at
http://www.sustainweb.org/pub_recent.shtm 

The Sunday Herald Report is posted at http://www.sundayherald.com/24375

The Scotland Sustain site is
http://www.sustainweb.org/organic_scot1.shtm