More on sustainability

Following on from the interesting discussion about sustainability and local sourcing yesterday, I should like to pass on the following article I bumped into on Reason: The Food Miles Mistake. Essentially, the argument is that when it comes to carbon emissions, it is best to grow food where it grows naturally and then ship it to where it is desired, rather than growing it under artificial light and heat (or cool!) near to the demand. The artificial growing methods contribute far more to greenhouse gas emissions than transport ever could.

The other lesson is, as you might expect, about subsidies. A free market, undistorted by subsidies, would tend to push production out to the developing world, which has obvious and immediate benefits for those countries which will begin to enjoy stronger trade connections with the rest of the world. The subsidies also ensure that crops are grown in the West using methods which are ecologically damaging (and thus, in the mot du jour, 'unsustainable'), rather than grown elsewhere using less damaging methods.

To those who will be voting in the European elections tomorrow, it is worth remembering that the Common Agricultural Policy is a collective iniquity and a stain on the record of Europe concerning development and environment. Obviously there are more issues than merely the CAP to take into account, and we are fortunate in the UK that all of our major parties agree in principle that the CAP is a cancer which need radical surgery; nevertheless, I would urge you to esteem a party which has the will and the wherewithal to abolish or radically reform the CAP more highly than one which claims such, but has done little or nothing to do so.

Scrap the CAP!