Organic food was once a luxury affordable only to a privileged few, but the massive interest in the organic sector on the part of supermarkets means that it is now within the reach – and the purse – of almost everyone in the more developed countries. But year-round availability has led to concerns being raised about the transporting of organic food from the four corners of the globe, especially when such transportation is by air.
Some critics argue that the distance travelled by much of the organic food in European shops – and the greenhouse gas emissions created by transporting it by air – far outweigh the benefits of organic production, and that the demand from supermarkets to have organic food on the shelf all the time, all year round, is undermining the environmental, ethical, social and above all local image of the organic movement.
In Europe, it is the UK market that is the most obsessed about the issue of transporting organic food across the world, and the national organic certification body the Soil Association has taken a tough stance. In March 2008, the organisation announced that it was to change its standards “so that organic produce can only be air-freighted if it also meets the Soil Association’s own ethical trade or the Fairtrade Foundation’s standard”. The decision was not taken lightly, and came after a four-month consultation with nearly 400 responses from the public, NGOs, industry, government and international agencies. “Organic production is all about sustainability and the balance this implies between social, environmental and economic objectives,” said Anna Bradley, chair of the Soil Association’s Standards Board, at the time. “By addressing concerns over air freight in our standards, we aim to make it easier for consumers to make informed and sustainable choices, allowing poor farmers in developing countries to achieve the social and environmental benefits of organic production along with the economic benefits achieved by selling in developed country markets.”
But the decision to set tougher standards based on ethical grounds was widely misinterpreted as being based instead on environmental grounds. “This proposal has been routinely misreported as ‘Soil Association bans air freight’. Not true. The Standards Board concluded that a ban on air freight would be the wrong response to people’s rightful concerns over greenhouse gas emissions, but also their equally strong concern that producers in developing countries should not be disadvantaged,” said Bradley. “The Soil Association believes the proposal constructively balances both concerns – ensuring organic produce will only be air freighted if it also delivers real benefits for farmers in developing countries.”
According to the Soil Association’s figures, the air freighting of organic food into the UK accounts for less than one percent of all imported organic food, and most of that is fresh fruit and vegetables that cannot reasonably be transported any other way: some 96 percent of organic airfreight is fresh fruit and vegetables imported out of season, according to the organisation. And only 30 percent of all organic food consumed in Britain is imported, whether by road, ship, train or air, with the majority being ‘exotic’ produce, citrus fruit, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, tea, coffee, chocolate and other products that cannot be grown there.
But an improved environmental performance will clearly be a fortuitous side effect of the Soil Association’s ethical stance. “Air freight is the fastest growing form of food transport: the perceived UK consumer demand for all year round fresh produce has seen air freight more than double since 1992 (albeit from a low base) and growth is predicted to continue,” said Bradley. “Air freight has become an integral part of the aviation industry. Although less than one percent of organic imports come by air freight, with the vast majority coming by sea, air freight has the highest global warming potential of any form of transport. Although accounting for less than one per cent of the total UK food miles, air freight is responsible for 11 per cent of the CO2 emissions from UK food transport, and can generate 177 times more greenhouse gas than shipping.”
The Soil Association claims that air freighting sits uneasily with the image of organic food as good for both consumers and the environment. “We want the public to have clear and meaningful information about both the environmental and social impact of air freighted organic food,” said Bradley in March. “That’s why the Soil Association is working with the Carbon Trust and the British Standards Institute to arrive at a reliable and comprehensive system of assessing the full carbon footprint of all food. The Standards Board will consider implementing carbon labelling within our standards for all organic goods – not just air freighted produce – when a good scheme is available. In the interim, we will be publishing information about air freight, drawing on the material we have gathered during the consultation. We will also now consult on whether and if so what, additional and potentially interim means are available to provide consumers with information that will allow them to make informed decisions – from education to labelling.”
But the Soil Association’s stance is not necessarily shared by every organic group. “We do not have an official position on the air freighting of organic food,” said Angela Caudle de Freitas of IFOAM, the Germany-based international organic association. “Our mission is to promote the development of sustainable organic production everywhere in the world. We very much support local production, but to realise our mission, there must be international trade in organic food. What we need to do is to ensure that trade is carried out in as sustainable a way as possible.”
For many organic growers, traders, suppliers and retailers, in fact, the issue of global sourcing is not perceived as an environmental problem but rather as a quality issue, said Caudle de Freitas. “Demand for organic food all year round means that it has to be sourced from further afield. But while Europe and North America have had well-defined, well-regulated organic standards for decades, and farmers there know clearly what is required of them, this is not the case in many of the countries now supplying much of the organic food on sale in Europe and North America. China, for example, provides a lot of the organic food we eat, but farmers there have had only a few years of experience with this kind of farming, yet consumers in the west expect them to meet the same high standards they have come to expect from local growers.”
The issue for IFOAM, then, is how to ensure that the more experienced organic producers can work with their counterparts in the developing world to ensure that they have the right structures in place as quickly as possible. “In particular, local organic certification bodies are vital; in China, all the organic food produced there for export to the EU or US is certified by European or American companies. But local Chinese companies should be able to certify for themselves.” Of the 30.4 million hectares of land currently certified according to organic standards, China accounts for some 2.3m, according to IFOAM data, making it the second largest organic producer after Australia and suggesting that the question of how to ensure produce sourced there meets the required standards is likely to become more pressing in the years to come.
IFOAM is not the only organisation that has taken a neutral stance. The European Commission is famous for keeping its options open over organic food production – while it wholeheartedly supports organics, it does not do so to the detriment of conventional production or even genetically modified crops – and farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has taken an equally non-committal stance on the transport of organic food. “My firm belief is that organic production should be driven by demand,” she said. “Demand is currently high and beyond what we can produce ourselves. Obviously, transporting organic food over long distances has negative environmental effects, and this is contrary to the dominant ethics of the sector. Outsourcing is clearly not our preferred solution to meet demand, as we favour establishing local systems. Yet, at the same time, we are looking to help developing countries to exploit their organic food production potential as one of the tools for sustainable development.”
She said that the Commission had no plans to set up an “acceptable distance” for transporting organic foods. “Instead, we are trying to help our own producers to increase their capacity, mainly through our rural development policy.” IFOAM data suggests that interest in Europe is continuing to grow, with 500,000 new hectares of organic land coming on stream in 2006. Yet it still remains costly and time-consuming for EU farmers to convert to organic production, despite Fischer-Boel’s claims that “the recently revised organic regulation should make life easier for our producers”. Nonetheless, the Commission clearly has one eye on the environmental impact of air freighting organic food, as it is “offering higher rates of assistance for organic production in the fruit and vegetable sector,” the products most likely to be transported by air freight into Europe.
Yet a new promotion campaign for organic food due to be launched by the Commission is only likely to further increase demand.This is a good thing for local European producers, certainly, but also for those in other parts of the world wanting to tap into rich Europe’s demand for organic products and, as a result, increase their shipments into the EU. The problem is that there is no simple solution to this problem – since the demand from consumers for food from across the globe is already there, and is unlikely to diminish, is it better to at least ship organic produce that has been made or grown in a less energy-expensive way? Or should shoppers be forced to go back to the old days of eating whatever is in season and can be grown locally? Organic purists may argue for the latter option, but the likelihood is that global sourcing of organic food is likely to increase even further in the years to come.
