18 LISTENER AUGUST 24 2019
planet, but the balance between how many we grow to eat against
how many we grow to sequester emissions is going to keep scientists
and politicians heavily preoccupied.BYEBYE BUSINESS
An extra hurry-up factor is what climate scientists call carbon leakage:
where an emitter is unable to do business profitably in a particular
jurisdiction because of local climate policies, so moves the business
to another country. That means well-intended local policies do not
benefit the climate but only that country’s emissions.
Although New Zealand’s food production is not directly or imme-
diately in danger of this happening, it remains a possibility. If we
drastically cut meat and dairy production, other countries will fill
the gap – with their
almost inevitably less
sustainably produced
exports.
In fact, fertiliser
companies told Par-
liament they would
have to consider leav-
ing the New Zealand
market if local rules
made business too
tough. The Govern-
ment has faced the
same “leakage” issue
in its curtailment of
the oil and gas sector, with future needs likely to be met by imports,
so potentially bearing the same net emission profile as if we’d con-
tinued activities here.
Muller instances Britain reducing manufacturing of aluminium
and steel – thus lowering its emissions – only to have to import
Chinese products.
The farm sector can also tell a better story than others in the econ-omy when it comes to food wastage. Most of New Zealand’s food
is wasted not by food producers but by consumers, and that’s the
focus of Waste Industry Management New Zealand (WasteMINZ),
the professional body representing the waste management, resource
recovery and contaminated land businesses and agencies. Its audit
found that about half of our national new landfill consignment in
2014-15 was avoidable food waste – that which could have been
eaten or composted. That uneaten tucker cost $872 million, and
was worth, in carbon accounting terms, 325,975 tonnes of carbon
dioxide emissions. That’s roughly 130,000 more trees needed or
more than 100,000 fewer petrol cars.
Wastage statistics for the retail and hospitality sectors are falling,
with professional and charity agencies increasingly diverting unsold/
uneaten food to food banks and the like.
As for moving to a more plant-based diet, most New Zealanders
could start with their own fridges and cupboards. Six out of the 10
foods we waste the most are fruits or vegetables.E
nvironmental journalist Amanda Little, author of The
Fate of Food, is on the phone from Nashville, Tennessee,
describing her 64 meatless days before encountering a
plate of carne asada tacos. “I completely buckled and
devoured the entire thing in about 30 seconds,” she
says. “So, I came to this story not as a food activist, a gardener
or vegetarian or animal-rights activist. I believe in all those
things, but I felt if I have all this knowledge about this topic
and am still not able to become a virtuous eater, how are we
going to do this? What does 100% sustainable look like for
those consumers who can’t afford to live on organic food or a
plant-based diet?”
For four years she crossed the globe looking for farming
systems that apply new technologies in order to preserve liveli-
hoods and provide food without further damaging the planet.
She explores everything from vertical indoor farms in China
and animal-free meats grown in laboratory dishes in the US to
smallholder farms in Kenya growing maize from Monsanto in
order to be liberated from the drudgery of low-yield growing
practices. “For me, that was an enormous perspective shift.
They weren’t saying, ‘Yay, GMO’. But they were saying, ‘We
need to consider every available tool.’
“I came out of this realising sophisticated technologies
can be used to protect nature and elevate these principles of
sustainability, rather than curtail or destroy them. It doesn’t
have to be all or nothing – technologi-
cal farming against organic farming,
industrial farming against small farm-
ing. If we could get the whole world
to go vegan, that would be great. But
talking from conservative Nashville,
Tennessee – my neighbours would
sooner endure the apocalypse than
give up barbecue and fried chicken.”All the tools in the box
LI
ND
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RO
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E
THE IPCC DIET
THE FATE OF FOOD: What We’ll Eat in a
Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World, by Amanda Little
(Bloomsbury, $33).If we drastically cut meat and dairy
production, other countries will
fill the gap less sustainably.