Sorry, got distracted for a couple of days by some paid work!
biffvernon wrote:mobbsey wrote:moving not to more "local" production but to more "personal" production.
Can you expand on that, please?
I've got a lot on this in the "Less" book which I'm currently trying to finish up for publication, but I'll pre-empt myself:
Much of the talk of "local" food centres on obtaining fruit and veg grown on farms nearer to where you live. However, by and large, those sources are still producing/processing the food using the same intensive means as the food that was grown further away. Organic production can even be slightly more energy dense because the cropping level is slightly lower from the same area of land. Whilst the transport component of our food supply is significant (most studies put it at around a fifth ? a little less than the quarter created by cooking/refrigeration and wastage of food in the home) it's the processing, packaging and cultivation that make up the bulk of the energy use in the food supply.
'Food miles' is an example of the problems created when we focus on only one aspect of the food supply (e.g.,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... icalliving). It's the same type of problem created by the over-emphasis on electricity producing renewable energy systems even though electricity is just less than one-fifth of total energy consumption, and represents only about a third of carbon emissions -- ultimately the strategy doesn't deliver on the goal!
In the sense of the wider peak energy context, we have to focus on where the greatest energy is expended in the whole supply chain -- food security and peak oil/gas are related to the whole supply chain not just the transport. As I noted at the meeting, looking at the problem in terms of ecological energetics, any species that get less energy from its food supply than it expends from producing it will ultimately go extinct. Within the human system there are wide variations in the energy density of food supply (e.g. in Sweden, life-cycle studies of food supply have put the variation as wide as 2 calories/calorie of food in rural areas to 8 calories/calorie in Goteborg). Curiously the most efficient form of food supply --
subsistence farming -- is the one type of farming that is frowned upon by the global economic system (because if you are 'subsistent' you are not a 'consumer') and the development of cash crops/agricultural development generally invariably pushes the subsistent off their land (and in the modern farming context, which Tim Lang confirmed at the meeting when he echoed my point, the most efficient and profitable part of any farm is the farmer's own private vegetable garden, not his main crop!).
The simplest way to take the bulk of this energy out of the food chain is to move cultivation and processing closer to the consumer -- we "personalise" rather than "localise". There are all sorts of ways to do this (e.g. in Teeside
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... 6/cityfood, or in Hackney
http://www.btinternet.com/~grow.communities/, and some of the community supported agriculture schemes where the consumers spend their own time working on the farm, andsome of the other initiatives noted in the replies above). Some of the most energy dense foods, such as fresh salad and herbs (they are lightweight, contain not a lot of calories, but use large amounts of packaging and are often flown or produced in greenhouses) which can easily be grown in pots and window boxes -- just about everyone can do that (add sprouting seeds to provide winter greens and you're really eating into the energy bill). Some of the lowest density foods (high calories to production energy ratio foods) are most of the carbohydrate staples ? cereals, potatoes, rice, etc. Producing these at the local scale doesn't make much sense. What is in between is what is in between is what is "negotiable" depending upon local conditions and the individuals own skills/willingness to learn new skills. This is where people's preferences can determine how low they can force their food energy costs.
Even though allotments are over-subscribed across the UK, we're still losing allotments, and private gardens, in the name of more ecologically sound "brownfield" development -- that's just looney! (arguably the food lost from an allotment when it's built on costs less energy to produce than the food production lost from the greenfields which might have otherwise been used). But beyond allotments and formal gardens, there is a lot of space for urban food cultivation on the areas councils currently manage as parks. Instead of the (in some cases, very expenses) plants and shrubs we cover our undeveloped public spaces with we could instead plant perennial food crops (as highlighted by Tim Lang in his talk, the UK produces only about 10% of its fresh fruit).
But "personalisation" isn't just about cultivation. Production/processing is a significant part. The food energy ratio is, in somewhere like urban London, about 10 calories for each calorie of food intake. However, some of the figures I've seen put the ratio at 20 or 30 calories per calorie for 'fast food' or eating out (mainly because many of the manual processing done in the home is predominantly replaced, wastefully, with machine processing to reduce labour costs). Even in the home, it's the growth in the convenience foods that have arisen since the advent of supermarket shopping that are driving energy consumption in the food chain (OK, ready meals are an obvious target, but packaging is a significant proportion of the energy of most supermarket-bought foods). Getting people cooking more food from raw ingredients, and entertaining/cooking for each other (e.g. throwing their own riotous parties instead of partying at gastro-pubs) is a means by which we can eat into the processing side.
The whole "local food" trend is really just a repackaging of the larger consumerist trend of the last 50 years to meet a more ethical demand in the market place. It doesn't change the problems of the underlying system, it just serves to make those problems a little less stark/more obscure. If we really want food security it doesn't come from "localisation", but from fostering a culture of "personalisation"; we grow a small proportion of our total consumption, perhaps work within communities to obtain a little more, but more importantly we prepare what we eat ourselves. This reduces transport, but it reduces the more significant components of cultivation, processing and packaging.
Comments?
You might be interested to know that the "Less is a Four Letter Word" strand of the Energy Beyond Oil Project is complete, hence why we're finalising the book. In September we'll be launching the new theme of "food" -- we're still working on a title to the project, perhaps "Liberation Gastronomy".
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