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New Nordic Food Conference – The potential and future of Nordic food when eating outside homeProfessor Sirpa Kurppa Agrifood Research Finland
Eating Nordic food outside home - a mutual challenge in combating the climate change
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Public catering has a great potential for directing eating habits or diets of Nordic people.
• Indicators of nutritional value of food portions are already presented.
• Additionally to nutrition, public catering has also a strong role in directing the environmental soundness of the food eaten by large number of people.
• At present, public procurement supports emphasis of environmental values by recommending organic food.
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Low carbon footprint is not required,yet, and it is questionable if a carbon footprint of a single food portion would be a sound way for certifying environmental sustainability.
A lot of labels referring to climate change and other impacts is available and more to come
Carbon foot printWater foot print
Nutrient foot print
Ecological foot print
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The food plate model
Figure Merja Saarinen MTT
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• For a customer, a foot print of a weekly diet could be reported.
• Possibly an assessment value of the overall set of dietary services of a canteen would be better.
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0 1 2 3 4
g PO4- eqv.
Raw materialproduction
Foodprocessing
Trade
Home
Minced meat-macaroni casserole
N-leaching/run off
P-leaching/run off
NH3 to air
NOx to air
Over 90% of the impact on eutrophication and about 70% of the impact on climate change was caused by the phase of raw material production.
Correlation between impacts in climate change and eutrophication, under Finnish production conditions, was high.
Thus, by the choice of food items one can simultaneously decrease both major impacts.
0 1 2 3 4
kg CO2 ekqv.
Raw material production
Food processing
Trade
Home
Minced meat-macaroni casserole
CO2
CH4
N2O In global climate change methane and di-nitrogen oxide have a big influence compared with carbon dioxide.Management of methane and di-nitrogen oxide emissions is very challenging
Carbon footprint is anyhow valuable!
Production of food raw material has a strong impact to environment and society.
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0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1kg CO2 eqv.
Raw material production
Food processing
Trade
Home
Vegetable casserole, redy-to-eat
CO2
CH4
N2O
0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1
kg CO2 ekqv.
Raw material production
Food processing
Trade
Home
Broad bean patty with mashed potatoes (veget.), home
CO2
CH4
N2O
0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1
kg CO2 eqv.
Raw material production
Food processing
Trade
Home
Vegetable casserole, home
CO2
CH4
N2O
In vegetarian dishes the differences between production phases balance
In vegetarian meals methane has minor importance
With ready-to-eat dishes importance of impacts from home activities decrease and impacts from food processing increase
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Carbon footprint is anyhow valuable, why!
Our food originates from the ecosystem services of our planet and our neighborhood and constitutes a linkage by which we are connected to nature, every day.
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• Food production also produces major waste flows.
Example root product.. Carrot …
Sorted out at fieldStorage loss
Lost at peeling
Lost at chopping
Left on service trays or on foodplate
• We transport food as great quantities all through Europe and internationally
Our food originates from the ecosystem services of our planet and our neighborhood and constitutes a linkage by which we are connected to nature, every day.
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• Public procurement of food could have a strong role in supporting sound food production culture, in the close neighborhood. • If the production procedures would be publicly known, material circulating, carbon neutral, we would not need to pay so much time on documentation. • Recently, we have seen a lot of examples how we can find fresh, healthy super food in our nature. • This material cannot be received in large quantities and harvested more than seasonally. • But that may be enough for local services.
ECO-localism, Fred Curtis 2003
• Natural, physical, social, financial and human capital
• Natural resources and ecosystem services• Physical infrastructure, tools and machines• Features of social organisations: networks,
norms and trust that facilitate coordination of mutual benefit
• Micro finance and credit cooperatives• Human skills necessary to succeed in the
community economy
Finally, the values, vision, analyses and conclusions of eco-localism are not merely theoretical. They are in use in many communities, institutions and localities. They are the deliberate and positive choice of many consumers, investors, business, home-owners, workers, farmers, and eaters. Eco-localism is thus a positive economic paradigm; it describes the reality of many people’s lives as well as the desires of many others.
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UNDERLYING CAUSES AND REMEDIES: A KEY FOCUS
THE COUNT-UP TO 2052: AN OVERARCHING FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION
By focusing to communication about carbon footprint and accepting environmentally sound way of present choices, we are able to decrease the carbon foot print of our food by about one quarter.
If we want to go further, possibly to carbon neutrality, changes of values, time sharing and change of institutions have to happen linked to a more human centric economy.
Locally more ‘frozen’ public food services may become a first step of a much bigger change.
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We could potentially freeze our foot print to our close neighborhood (ecosystem services as close as possible)!
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