Beanz Meanz British?

[eccles]

Interesting food article on the Beeb.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-l ... e-65908618

[OurCreature]

Very interesting Eccs - I hope it works.

My sister is very keen on buying UK-originated produce. For example she will buy only UK-grown asparagus so when it isn't in season there's no asparagus on her table. She won't buy Danish meat either, not because she is very pro-British food but because she doesn't like the carbon footprint of shipping it into the UK.

[eccles]

Carbon footprints can be very misleading. For instance did you know that the UK is the fourth most intensive farming nation in Europe, topped only by Ireland, Netherlands and Belgium. Getting those high yields uses a lot of mainly nitrogen fertilisers which use a lot of energy. Spain is our major source for oranges, but if we imported them from North Africa which isn't much further away we'd save on the carbon footprint from fertilisers and probably from shipping costs as well because mile-for-mile shipping by sea is better than by land.
Australia with which we have recently concluded a free trade deal uses only 1/3 as much fertilisers as the UK. Whether that is enough to offset the shipping cost compared to southern Europe is debatable but it isn't that clear cut.
https://ourworldindata.org/fertilizers

[OurCreature]

Thanks for that info Eccs. I knew that agriculture was very intensive in the Low Countries (IIRC the Netherlands is the world's 3rd biggest exporter of agricultural goods) and that there is no such thing as a natural soil in Belgian agriculture because of all the fertiliser addition etc and I learned that 55 years ago in school. However, I didn't know that the UK and Ireland were in the top 4. I shall trot those facts out about energy costs re fertiliser production next time my sister spouts on about carbon footprints and food imports.