WANDER around the local supermarket and you will struggle to find any clues to the environmental impact of the food you eat. If you are lucky, some of the seafood might bear the mark of the Marine Stewardship Council, which certifies fish caught in a sustainable way, but that鈥檚 about it.
Yet farming is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, only slightly behind heating and electricity. And while it鈥檚 relatively easy to cut emissions from electricity by switching to solar, reducing emissions from farming is a tougher nut to crack.
You might think buying local food is always preferable to imported food when it comes to carbon emissions, but even this is not a reliable guide. Food flown thousands of miles can still have a much lower carbon footprint than, say, local produce grown in heated greenhouses.
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The one label you鈥檙e likely to find on many food items is the 鈥渙rganic鈥� one. But if you care about the environment, don鈥檛 buy it (it鈥檚 not healthier either, but that鈥檚 another story).
For starters, you are not helping wildlife. Yes, organic farms host a greater diversity of wildlife than conventional ones. But because the yields are lower, organic farms require more land, which in the tropics often means cutting down more rainforests.
And organic food also results in
The trouble is, there is no way to tell whether that basic loaf of bread is better in terms of greenhouse emissions than the organic one sitting next to it on the supermarket shelf.
This divide will become ever greater in the future, because the organisations that set the rather arbitrary standards for what counts as 鈥渙rganic鈥� have firmly rejected the technology showing the greatest promise for reducing farming emissions: genetic modification.
鈥淔ood flown thousands of miles can have a much lower carbon footprint than local produce鈥�
Existing GM crops may already be reducing carbon emissions even though they were not designed to do so. Next up: crops that can capture more of the sun鈥檚 energy, require less fertiliser and tolerate drought or salt.
But the organic movement will have none of it. There was a faint hope that some might at least accept gene editing, given that gene-edited crops can be genetically indistinguishable from conventional crops. But no, on 18 November the US organic standards board voted unanimously against this.
What we really need are climate labels on foods, so consumers can see whether, say, gene-edited bread is far better in climate terms than organic bread. This isn鈥檛 going to be easy. Measuring all the emissions associated with producing food and getting it onto a supermarket shelf is extremely complex, not to say expensive. Most schemes so far have foundered. Tesco tried introducing its own carbon labelling in 2007, for instance, but eventually abandoned the idea.
And it鈥檚 pointless unless the labels are easy to follow. One promising proposal is to describe the greenhouse emissions associated with particular food items in terms of what percentage of a person鈥檚 typical daily carbon footprint they represent.
Climate labelling is definitely worth pursuing despite the challenges. The only alternative is to allow consumers to continue being hoodwinked by feel-good mumbo jumbo 鈥� and the stakes are far too high to let this happen.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淐are about Earth? Ditch organic food鈥�
