The global food system relates heavily to global warming as about half (44-57 per cent) of global greenhouse gas emissions (GGE) are produced by industrial food production. This is from six processes.

Deforestation: This occurs to provide farmland. The vegetation, which is often burned off, releases CO2 into the 44-57 per cent atmosphere, responsible for 70-90 per cent of world deforestation and produces 15-18 per cent of GGE.

Production: Industrial agriculture uses tractors and other machinery which burn fossil fuel. Ploughing exposes carbon, which is held in the soil to the air, forming carbon dioxide. Animals raised in huge concentrations have a high carbon footprint too. Monoculture crops, concentrated animal feeding operations, fertilisers and agrotoxins account for 11-15 per cent of GGE.

Transportation: Food can be grown in one place, transported to the other side of the world to be processed and back again before it reaches our supermarket shelves, causing 5-6 per cent of GGE.

Processing and packing: This accounts for an incredible 8-10 per cent of GGE, to process our food into the many, mainly plastic, packages on the shelves.

Refrigeration and supermarkets add another 2-4 per cent of GGE.

Then finally there is waste: The industrial food system wastes half of the food it produces, then we waste more food once it reaches the supermarkets, accounting for 3-4 per cent of GGE.

But doesn’t industrial farming feed the world? Can we survive without it? Actually we could. Smallholders, small, mixed arable farms with a few animals, produce more than half the world’s food. They provide 70-80 per cent of food consumed in non-industrialised countries. In the last 50 years, 140 million hectares of fertile land has been taken over to produce soybeans, palm oil, canola and sugarcane. Now small farmers are squeezed onto less than a quarter of the world’s farmland.

So what is the first step we can take to lower the carbon footprint of food? These figures show the importance of buying local British food and home cooking using fresh ingredients, and avoiding packaged and processed food as much as possible. Not only are we told how bad processed food is for our health but this shows it’s also really bad for the health of our planet.

Transition Town Wellington’s Sustainable Food Group

Figures from Grain.org