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Hurrah For Oxfam!

Wednesday, 19th March 2008

Not something I normally say but they are on the side of the angels on the issue of food miles. At least they are now, I confess to not having monitored their position previously.

Oxfam today appealed to shoppers not to fall for the food miles fantasy that promises to save the planet but threatens to make life worse for thousands of poor farmers around the world.

As Fairtrade Fortnight gathered pace, Duncan Green, Head of Research at Oxfam said: "Buying green is rightly at the forefront of consumers' minds but rejecting foods on the grounds of how far they have travelled oversimplifies the issue, unfairly punishes farmers from poor countries, and may even lead to higher emissions."

For example, growing roses in artificial conditions in Holland and transporting to the UK produces almost six times more carbon than growing them in the warmer climate of Kenya and flying them in.

The concept of 'food miles' does not take into account the amount of carbon that is generated during the production and retail process, and is therefore a misleading indicator for consumers of total carbon emissions.

Well, quite. We do in fact have a very useful method of measuring the total resources used in the production of something. The price. Now, in the case of carbon emissions, they are not included into the price, so the price does not reflect them.

Which leads us to three possible solutions. One, ignore them, two, concoct spurious schemes such as food miles to push highly dubious assertions and three, incorporate carbon emissions into the price structure.

The simplest way to do that is a carbon tax and Tim Harford has pointed out that such a tax, at the correct level as defined by the Stern Review, would add 1 p to a 250 gramme pack of green beans flown in from Kenya.

And thus is the problem of climate change solved.