The sustainability debate is full of contradictions, says Nick Fenwicke-Clennell
It is fact, emphatically supported by raw logic, that our planet’s natural resources are running out. What raises the occasional eyebrow are the increasing contradictions in, not just the supporting evidence, but the statements and actions of government.
Many government initiatives appear to bypass the theory of cause and effect – the controversy over the subsidy-generated rush into Bio Fuel production, without prior thought for its implications to foodstuffs, being a glaring case in point. Particularly when the global restaurant has to feed an additional 70 million covers a year! And wherefore Foodservice in this arena? Food, and the provision thereof, is our business and the sustainability of its supply fairly relevant to our existence. Irrespective of whether we personally pay passing lip service to the green concept or wholeheartedly follow the environmentalist’s mantra, at the end of the day it is our customers’ belief-driven demands, and our anticipation of those, that dictate what we do and say as an industry.
As far as the whole environmental argument is concerned, it is the claims and counter-claims that the media- informed layman finds so puzzling. We’re all used to the scenario of being sold the latest superfood or wonderdrug, only to be told a couple of years down the road that it could give us some ghastly disease. Only the other day the televisual Sword of Damocles fell on organic food, with the suggestion that gasp! – it was no better for us than ordinary food.
There was also an article in a highly respectable Sunday broadsheet that rubbished the suggestion that the polar icecap was in perpetual meltdown and claimed that last year’s dramatic shrinkage was, in fact, a cyclical event supported by statistics. The article went on to suggest and that the icecap had in fact increased in size, so perhaps we don’t need to get the wellies out after all!
But it is also the contradictions that confuse. Why, for example, does the UK government sanctimoniously demand that we follow every carbon reducing initiative, penalising us at every opportunity, whilst, at the same time, forcing through unpopular and environmentally damaging plans to develop the capacity at London’s Heathrow and Stansted airports? As aviation is a major carbon dioxide polluter and the fastest growing source of emissions in the UK, this is puzzling indeed. Which brings us back to Bio Fuels. Sure, we need to find alternative fuel sources, but the headlong dive into the production of crops for Bio Fuels seems to have been pursued with little planning or forethought; the end product eminently sensible, but the implications seemingly ignored in cavalier fashion.
Incentives to farmers to plant Bio Fuel crops have compounded shortages of animal and human food resource, already diminished by global population growth. The current wheat shortage is a direct result, with the knock on effect being the price inflation we are currently seeing.
The recent scenes of pig farmers protesting outside the Houses of Parliament over, among other things, the cost of feed, is an echo of similar complaints from US cattle farmers in 2007.
It was this high cost of cattle feed, due to over emphasis on Bio Fuels, which led to diminishing cattle numbers and the resultant reduction in US milk production which, along with the Australian drought and increased world demand for milk based products, contributed to a global shortage of liquid milk.
This milk shortage had been triggered by the increased demand for protein- based products from China and India, markets which, due to increasing affluence and western orientation, were in the throes of changing their diet from being predominantly vegetable-based, to a more Westernised one, featuring such delights as ice cream and pizza, requiring large quantities of milk powder. Consequently, the value of milk powder rocketed and world’s dairies piled into the production thereof. Hence a liquid milk shortage which could be argued to have the implications of Bio Fuel production lurking in its ancestry.
We can’t blame the farmers for reacting to market forces. Farmers are businessmen after all and, like any other, will respond to profit opportunities. What we could do with is some joined up, macro thinking from our global governors, together with a level of clarity on the environmental issue so claims, counter claims and contradictions become a thing of the past. Cause and effect?
