The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Buying locally-grown food could help save our planet
D thinkuring the past year, amid this pandemic, one of the major things I everyone has learned is that local is king – whether that be buying from your local small retailer to support them or just realising how beautiful a country we live in, which is waiting to be explored by its own inhabitants.
When you stay local you can reduce your carbon footprint at the same time, by visiting new places at home rather than jumping on a plane for a sunny holiday. And also by being careful as to what food you are buying, making sure it has not been flown or shipped from the other side of the world.
The vegan community has chosen possibly the worst month to promote its message of a lower CO
2 diet.
In the winter months, as part of a balanced diet, eating meat produced on the grasslands of Scotland, being slaughtered and butchered often only miles from the original farm, can be sold with a much lower carbon footprint than asparagus grown in – and flown from – Argentina.
Eating seasonally is a fantastic way to keep a balanced diet and keep your impact on the environment to a minimum.
In the UK we produce some fantastic fruit and vegetables all year round.
Asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries, raspberries and tomatoes, to name but a few, are grown in the summer months and harvested into November.
And we can’t forget about our winter vegetables including carrots, potatoes, turnips, Brussels sprouts – all either coming from
short-term storage or out of the ground a day before they are on the shelf for you to buy.
The greenhouse gases released by livestock have been miscalculated up until now.
The methane ruminants release is what is called a flow gas.
If a stable herd size is maintained (nationally) then the climate warming impact of the methane
released by the growing ruminants is similar to that captured by the growing of grass and cereals for their feed.
Coupled with the addition of less tillage every farm in the UK could be carbon negative.
Livestock is becoming more efficient through selective breeding, with the national herd size dropping with the same tonnage of meat being produced.
The national herd has been dropping consistently by around 1% per year for several years. More efficient cattle and less methane emitted will lead to reducing greenhouse emissions from the UK herd.
So if people would like to start to change the world and the CO2 level either globally or more locally, they need to look more closely at where their food comes from and ends up.
They should check the label and make sure their food was grown as local as they can buy.
Reducing your waste at home is one of the best, but least spoken about, ways to reduce your carbon output.
In this country we waste almost a third of all the food that is bought.
By reducing food waste we not only save the carbon from production but avoid further carbon release from
the degrading waste. While you are saving CO2 emissions you are also saving money.
■ Crawford Mclaren is the chairman of Strathearn JAC and is part of the national agri and rural affairs committee at the Scottish Association of Young Farmers Clubs. He works on his family’s beef and arable farm near Crieff in Perthshire.