Climate Friendly Food

Local food and climate change

Making Local Food Work have just released a report titled Local food and climate change - the role of community food enterprises.

The aim of the report is to look at what practices local food enterprises can make in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions right through the food chain. Local food does not implicitly imply that the food is low carbon - indeed food miles only make up a small proportion of the overall carbon footprint of most foods. Some recommendations include:

• Use less nitrogen fertilitser on farm
• Use less bought-in animal feed
• Increase the efficiency of transport and logistics
• Using renewable energy - especially electricity
• Educating customers about efficient use of energy at home

The whole report is available to download here for free. It makes an important contribution to the movement towards a lower-carbon food system.