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 foresthippy rated 7 months ago - Did you know that lamb produced locally in the UK has 4 times the carbon footprint of lamb produced and shipped to the UK from New Zealand, including transportation?
This is because New Zealand farming practices and production methods require significantly less energy input per unit of produce. ...
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2 Reviews
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- Samaryantha rated 6 months ago
- Food Miles Comparative Energy/Emissions Performance of New Zealands Agriculture Industry
As a concept, food miles has gained some traction with the popular press and certain groups overseas. However, 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.
This report is a comparison between the UK and New Zealand's agriculture industry but if you do a little more research you will find that Spanish tomatoes and strawberries also have less of a carbon footprint (including tranportation costs) than the UK.
- foresthippy rated 7 months ago
- Did you know that lamb produced locally in the UK has 4 times the carbon footprint of lamb produced and shipped to the UK from New Zealand, including transportation?
This is because New Zealand farming practices and production methods require significantly less energy input per unit of produce. This efficiency more than makes up for the food miles required to transport it here. New Zealand also beats us on butter, apples and onions (although only just for onions, and only when you consider storage).
Also, with a little more research into the true carbon cost of food production, it seems that Spanish tomatoes and strawberries also outperform the UK equivalent, since Spain doesn't need heated greenhouses. Again, this includes transportation.
Although buying locally produced food helps the UK farming industry, carbon footprint reduction isn't as simple as 'food miles' would have you believe. Food mileage is only a small part of the total cost of food production to the environment.
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