15 Sept 2006

"Food miles" are being used as a weapon against New Zealand's farm exports to Europe. Kent Atkinson of NZPA reports research which shows lamb can be grown here and shipped to Britain for a quarter of the energy cost of UK lamb.

Producing milksolids in New Zealand and shipping it to Britain is less than half as costly – in terms of energy and emissions – than UK milk, says research from Lincoln University.

And, compared to UK sheepfarmers turning out lambs, NZ farmers incur only a quarter of the energy and emissions "costs" producing lamb and sending it 17,700km to Britain.

The findings are in a report released yesterday by Agriculture Minister Jim Anderton, who says the concept of food miles is too often promoted by people motivated by self-serving objectives rather than genuine environmental concerns.

"It is being used in Europe by self- interested parties trying to justify protectionism in another guise," he said yesterday.

New Zealand trade officials have said concerns from the environmental lobby over the distance food travels from paddock to plate could undermine efforts to portray the country's primary produce in affluent northern hemisphere markets as environmentally sustainable.

The European concerns over "food miles" were highlighted recently with a UK dairy manufacturer, Dairy Crest, mounting an advertising campaign knocking Fonterra's butter over the distance it travelled to market.

And Britain's National Consumer Council (NCC) yesterday called on eight leading supermarket chains to source more food locally.

It said a survey done by Britain's Food Commission showed the Waitrose chain was the best performer in the UK – in environmental terms – but criticised Waitrose for stocking organic strawberries which had been flown from New Zealand, the BBC reported today.

NCC chairman Lord Whitty said: "By throwing away ten billion carrier bags each year and transporting carrots from Egypt and strawberries from New Zealand, we hit the environment hard."

But Trade Minister Phil Goff said the Lincoln University report, completed in July by Caroline Saunders, Andrew Barber and Greg Taylor, found the production of key New Zealand agricultural exports was more energy efficient than production of the same primary products in Europe.

"This was even after taking into account the distance New Zealand exports have to travel to reach key markets," Mr Goff said.

The researchers said "food miles" was a very simplistic concept: using the distance food travelled as a measure of its impact on the environment.

"This debate – which only includes the distance food travels – is misleading as it does not consider total energy use, especially in the production of the product".

Around a third of NZ food and beverage exports were going to EU markets, and the proposal by food miles campaigners to source food from as close as possible to where it was to be consumed had potential to threaten New Zealand exports.

Environmental impact calculations which included the energy use and carbon dioxide emissions associated with both farm production and transport to the consumer was a more valid comparison than just distance travelled.

The study looked at dairy products, apples, onions, and lamb.

Comparison of energy used and carbon dioxide emissions showed UK dairy produce used twice as much energy per tonne of milksolids, even when the calculations included energy associated with transport from NZ to Britain.

"This reflects the less intensive production system in NZ than the UK, with lower inputs, including energy," the researchers said.

A similar comparison for NZ and UK lamb showed "the energy used in producing lamb in the UK is four times higher than the energy used by NZ lamb producers, even after including the energy used in transporting NZ lamb".

NZ was also more energy-efficient in producing and delivering apples to the UK market than British orchardists, with the NZ energy costs for production a third of those in the UK., partly reflecting the lower greenhouse gas emissions from NZ electricity generation.

"Even when transport is added NZ energy costs are approximately 60 per cent of those in the UK",

More energy was used to produce onions in NZ than in the UK, but if allowance was made for storage of UK onions to sell in the same market window as NZ imports, energy costs rose to 30 per cent higher than those in NZ, even accounting for transport.

In general, New Zealand farmers tended to apply less fertiliser – which required large amounts of energy to manufacture – and animals were able to graze outdoors year-round.

In a history of the food miles campaign, the researchers said German food and agriculture officials have been pushing for country-of-origin labelling so that consumers can choose products which have been transported only a short distance to market.

The labelling rules had been supported by Italian, French, Finnish, Irish and Portuguese delegations.

And a working group on "local food" commissioned in Britain by government officials had stated: "Food miles are now a readily recognised concept and a useful shorthand term for the energy costs associated with food production and transport".

The report said this was completely untrue – food miles measured only the energy cost of transport, not production.