How much is the environmential lobby paying this paper to print this propoganda?

#1-Aoda-The idea comes from a spokeman from the UN. That says it all.

That'll be more of us shopping in Lidl's then?

Fight poverty at home....Grow local, buy local, eat local !
The reliance on imports needs to be minimised for all products but especially food and energy.

The related topic is 'fair trade', so i need to know what is fair about having the west's farmers match the economies of the developing worlds' ?
The UN, in it's current state, should be ignored...

Following a logical argument about CO2 seems to be difficult for the above posters.

This article is total c**p. It talks about stripping 'organic' status because of carbon usage. Since when has carbon usage ever had anything to do with whether or not a product is organic.

Organic foods in general terms are those that are not grown with the use of additives, chemicals, etc. The fact that they are transported anywhere does not change the growth pattern.

Take it to its logical conclusion. Unless current organic products are transported by horse and cart, i.e. non destructive CO2 producers, then every product delivered by van or truck would need to be relabeled as non organic.

These idiots need to wake up and smell the roses.

Bit of an old story, it was on BBC a few weeks ago!

I think we need to wake up and smell the roses in general. We have to make a decision. Do we run down UK/Scottsih agriculture to little more of a pecularity and invest heavily into the African nations until they become as economic as ourselves (with the consequential increase in energy use) or do we continue to buy local and never mind about the African nations?

Can't have it both ways and forget about organic farming, it's land intensive and as yet we only have enough agri land to produce 70% of our food needs. By being organic, we would need double the land to produce the same amount.

9 times out of 10 buying locally produced goods is better for the environment. Easy decision.

Right, so let me see if I've got this right ----- what this article is saying is that the tractors that the UK farmers use polute the earth more than the planes to carry the food over from Africa ......

Uhuh - sure.

#8 your horses produce CO2 and methane, need to bal;ance that against tractor emissions.

Rulesbutnotrulers #12 - Hi there, maybe I am a bit thick this morning, but I really don't understand your post.

If, as you suggest, the status 'organic' involves the whole food chain (I would have thought you meant the production chain) then I very much doubt if any food could ever be declared as being 'organic'.

I am not trying to be awkward or critical or anything like that I really just didn't understnd what you are trying to say. let me know and we can discuss further.

Saoghal Beag #14 - The CO2 produced by horses, etc. is not in the form of fossil fuel source and has a completly different effect so not relevant in the equation.

Even humans produce CO2 every time we breathe so we have to compare apples with apples and not with pears.

The quality of comment here is depressing. The Food Miles campaign is (another) outrageous attempt by the farming lobby to keep Scottish / UK / EU customers buying from massively inefficient local sources.

The CO2, not the miles traveled, is the important thing. New Zealand can produce lamb, cheese, butter, etc.; truck it a short distance to a port; ship it around the world; pay a massive import tarrif; and put produce that's cheaper and better for the environment on the shelves. That this is astonishing is more about your local producers (massively subsidies, price supports, and tarrifs) than New Zealand's (who have zero subsidies, zero price supports, and zero import tarrifs to protect them).

14 and 16.
Animals and humans are carbon neutral because the CO2 they exhale comes from food that has absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere while growing.

We can't afford to go back to using horses, because of the loss of efficiency. Unless of course you want to increase risks of starvation, or are willing to go back to farms yourself.

The debate around the various environmental fads will continue unabated, while real solutions are being ignored, or rejected.

For example, in the late 70's the proposal to use Gamma Irradiation of food was rejected because of dis-information. Enviromentalists and various other "tree-huggers" wrongly claimed that food irradiation would affect the consumer, while multiple longer-term studies showed that no radiation is ratianed in the food, or can be passed or ingested by the consumer.

Had we accepted then the notion of irradiating food with Gamma rays (perfectly safe), most of our food could have been kept fresh for months and years without requiering preservatives, refrigiration, or specialised airfreight or refrigerated transportation. The cost savings to consumers, the abolition of price fluctuations, and ready availability of fruit and veg all year round would have made a great contribution to the improved diets and health. Gamma Irradiation could also have solved the problem of world hunger, and reduced the reliance on fertilisers and pesticides. Just the savings in energy, transportation, refrigeration etc. could have reduced the carbon foot-print of this world by 20%!

If we got rid of the farm subsidies our food would cost more, but our taxes would be lower, not only from the subsidies but also because Africa would no longer be in poverty & need our support.

I buy organic not because I am afraid of the .02% of pesticides that stay in the food but because I care about the 99.98 that go into the ecosystem. And for that I care about the whole world equally.

Put on a sticker that it was air freight if you must (how is that different from saying "fresh food from Kenya" anyway, unless there's people who think Kenya is a town in Devon. That would still probably take air freight to be fresh in Scotland!) But don't discourage people anywhere from using organic standards.

Rulesbutnotrulers #19 - Hi there, thanks for the clarification, your point is now clearer to me and makes more sense.

I still don't necessarily agree that linking 'Organic' with CO2 consumption really makes sense. I say this because I still hold to the idea (possibly mistaken) that anything defined as being organic is based on the usage, or better said lack of usage, of artificial fertilisers, preservatives, etc.

If you combinie my idea of organic with the arguments against CO2 production and the so-called air-miles then the whole thing does not really make sense.

Using the methodology you propose then every step of the production cycle would need to be carbon neutral for a product to be organic.

I really don't think the two can be directly linked as a result. I fully agree that we, the consumers, have to be more aware of the damage being caused to the global environment by the usage of fossilised fuels, etc. and can support the idea of reducing unnecessary CO2 production by cutting out air-miles, etc..

Just as a side thought, not directly linked to our particular topic, I wonder if by reducing air-miles we can help alleviate hunger in the so-called third world countries. My thinking here, probably somewhat naively, is that if we reduced our demand for products with high air-miles values (thus reducing CO2 production) then more crops or arable land would be released to feed the local population. Unfortunately world economics doesn't really play along with this rgument as these countries need the revenues from these crops to buy in what they need in other areas.

Speak to you later, good to see that people can still discuss properly and understand others points of view, although not necessarily agreeing with them.

This crew must think we have just arrived from planet zog. Bought a turnip recently, country of origin- Portugal. Now for me to get it right, it is more efficient to fly or truck them over, than our farmers to sell them locally. Then again, because of the CAP, they would rather pay the farmer a subsidy to let his land lay fallow than plant anything. Tell these tales of saving the planet to the liberal, middle-class . they take it down in big gulps.

Surely we should only buy food form other countries which don't grow or out of season in Scotland.

That should give the African poor countries and others around the world a chance to export to us and make profit !!!!(5p!!!!).

As not many fruits grow in Scotland (those that do a large % need to be sugared before eaten i.e. wee, tiny apples & Rhubarb)

#16 You can tell the difference between CO2 from a tractor, from a horse and from a jetplane???? No matter where the CO2 comes from it is part of the equation.

Embedded CO2 within in the supply chain of any product should be considered before calling something carbon neutral, ie the proposed carbon neutral housing which does not consider embedded carbon is just a con, though a step in the right direction.

Horses a total carbon in the form of grass, the excrete the majority of it, use some to maintain their homoestasis and the remainder for building cells and chemicals, as long as it is on grass. In winter when it is on non-green fodder then there is the processing and delivery of that fodder. SO though horses may be low carbon, it is unlikely that they are actually carbon neutral, that is utopic thinking.

As for tractors, we feed them diesel, they convert most of it to energy and expel the waste products. If we use biodiesel, preferable from recovered vegetable oil waste then we greatly reduce thier carbon burden though are unlikley to ever match the embedded carbon from their production.

Saoghal Beag #26 - There is a world of difference between CO2 produced by living organisms and those created from fossil fuels. I don't understand the science of it but accept the facts produced by scientists.

As Rulesbutnotrulers said in one of his posts nothing is really carbon neutral we have to accept that and look at the additional CO2 we produce in growing, transporting food crop, etc.
As horses do not produce destructive CO2 they would theoretically be a better way to transport goods. However I live in the real world and going back to the horse and cart is totally unrealistic.

However again I go back to the article which tries to link 'organic' with air-miles and CO2 usage. The two in my humble opinion CANNOT be directly linked.

If you read my post at 23 you will see my viewpoint better.

Clearly the answer to all this is vats of genetically altered proteins and fungus - nothing like a good protein stew.

Science will save us a lot quicker than these moaning hippies.

#27 IanW, obviously science isn't your strong point, you are taking anthropomorphism to the nth degree there. You can not get nasty CO2 molecules and nice CO2 molecules. No matter where the molecule comes from it has the same physical qualities and that includes its global warming potential, and to suggest anything else is just naiive.

Also i was emphasising that there is no such thing as carbon neutral, in reality when all things are taking into concideration.

My flipant post on 14 gas that
1 Horses are not carbon neutral
2 In addition to CO2 they produce methane which has a greater global warming potential than CO2.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you, just emphasising that proper science should be used.

#29 Nick

more good science and less of this fluffy non-sense would help.

Nice horsey........nasty tractor........

#29 Nick, be careful mentioning VATS......Gordon will hear of this and next thing the cost will be higher than a gallon of petrol in stornoway.

Honestly, I've never read such drivel in my life.

If you're prepare to save your own pennies by eating food produced by starving Africans who suffer a barely sustainable standard of living, fair enough.

If you don't understand New Zealand's huge food production advantages due to their climate, or their freedom from stifling red tape and regulation, equally fair enough.

If you want to eat food from countries with abysmal animal health and welfare standards, fair enough again.

There's an ever-growing world shortage of food and we can't afford to mess around with facetious arguments about CO2 or Organics or the absurd CAP - if we go on like this we'll find the supermarket shelves EMPTY, and by God you'll howl then.

If you don't know that Scottish agriculture is about the most efficient in the world despite being over-regulated almost out of existence, WAKE UP AND STOP KNOCKING YOUR OWN COUNTRY.

Just to add that my "drivel" comment referred to Alastair Jamieson's article.

#32 Allis, what scotland's food producers are great at is the production of top quality products, some of the best cheeses, best fish, best meat, best fruit. i for one won't knock scotland.

You are right it isn't just about carbon. Personnally i think Fair Trade is one of the most important food lables on our shelves.

I think organic food products have their place but not on a health basis. Organic wine......when the toxin in the greatest concentration is alcohol avoiding trace or near undectable levels of other chemicals is a complete fallacy. But organic can be justified on a wider environmental basis as one of the posters above pointed out.

Ultimately the lives we lead have to be about balance, i want coffee, it can't be grown on the sides of teh ochils without massive amounts of energy/carbon so i choose fair trade coffee from tropical countries.

that some folk on here believe in good molecules and bad molecules shows how ill considered their arguments are and how little science education they have.

Saoghal Beag #30 - Hi there, no offence taken or anything like that. I fully acknowledge that when it comes to the science of CO2, all I know is that scientists consider that the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels is damaging to the environment whereas CO2 produced by living animal, plants, etc. is not (or more accurately far less damaging).

I agree that carbon neutral status does not exist, I think I made that clear in my post as this was raised by another poster.

Basically all I am saying is that the production of organic food (which has not been treated in any special way with chemicals) has nothing to do with carbon emissions. A farmer ploughing a field using animals generates, relatively speaking, practically no CO2 whereas one using a tractor does.

This production of CO2 does not affect, in my opinion, what is deemed to be organic.

The linking therefore of organic 'good' with CO2 'bad' is wrong. What should be linked is the so called air-miles to CO2 production. Fly the food 1000 miles would no doubt produce more CO2 than driving it 20 miles in a van. The food is still the same at the end though.

#36 IanW, yip even organic food carries a carbon burden and as you say it is not the raison d'etre.

The reasoning behind the "diifference" between CO2 from fossil and non-fossil sources is not that the carbon itself differs but it sources do. Fossil fuel is a carbon sink and therefore burning it introduces more carbon into the existing carbon in the biosphere/atmosphere.

As Allis says it's not just about carbon at all.

Of course this assumes you accept the whole argument CO2 is bad in the first place.

Afterall, we live in what is essentially a C02 starved atmosphere compared to those in the earth's history.

For all those nattering about "organic". To see the defined requirements for organic status (to be able to label the products as organic) go to the soil association web site.
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/848d68904...

There are other organisation also.

As a Scot I have always been very proud of our stance on anti-elitism, which has also generally included anti-racism, as I am sure most people in Scotland are. So you could say I was genuinely shocked and dismayed when reading through the Daily Record on Saturday, to find an article on a study into Scottish names, ranking Scots by how Scottish their names are, by a bunch of so called marketing experts called CACI, without the paper saying anything at all about its elitist and racist implications. What’s more the Daily Record didn’t just ignore the implications of the article, but also used it to infer that Sean Connery was less of a Scot due to it, which should surely go against everything we stand for. What’s more if you were to ask people the names of famous living Scot, who in their right mind would say you can’t count Sean Connery because he hasn’t a Scottish sounding name?

#41 Again with this post?

Sean Connery, sounds Irish, never heard of him.

Nick_Byrne., #42.
I guess it is true, as far as you are concerned, ignorance is bliss. Isn't it incredible, as far as the unionists are concerned, if you are Tory, Labour, LibDem. or monster raving loony, as a Scot you wouldn't be treated as bad in the press as
Sean Connery has been treated, and that is only because he is a nationalist, some equality there.

The Antifascist, Edinburgh / 7:06pm 17 Jul 2007
‘Andrew Allan: I am referring to the non stop references of the SNP to how they feel that Scotland is the last vestige of the Empire etc – everyone knows the kind of nationalist **** to which I am referring! Such nonsense can only stem from an underlying mindset of bigotry! What is all this absolute **** about “partnership” between Scotland and England by the way? Modern day Scotland is an integral part of the UK and Europe and no more a partner of England than it is a partner of Germany! The political situation at the time of the Act of Union is about as relevant as that which pertained at the time of the birth of Christ! THE ANTIFASCIST IS SICK TO THE BACK TEETH OF THE INWARD LOOKING PAROCHIALISM OF SNP SUPPORTERS!’
Auntie Fash, ‘The’ seems to given you delusions of grandeur, and your anti is but all ironic. Just for you and your friend you view in your mirror, if a country has an Empire and you are joined to it, and then it diminishes, then you are the last vestiges of the Empire, and no self delusional naval watching institutionalised drivel is going to change that. Your ideas on bigotry, and the rest of the civilized world’s, I’m afraid are on two different planes of existence. You wouldn’t recognize a bigot if you saw them reflected in your mirror. As Scots we believe that we are as good as anyone else, and should be treated as so by others, yet even though we were meant to receive at least almost equal treatment by our Westminster government, for the last fifty years or so we have been kicked in the teeth most of the time, with just a little tokenism since the Scottish parliament was agreed. An integral part of the UK you say, but yes it is, but only when the Westminster governments need somewhere to put its deep water nuclear submarines, and tax revenue from gas and oil, try watching the news, you will only find Scottish news when it is felt it will benefit the Westminster government the most, if

this thread seems to have wandered a little way off topic...
Good CO2 and bad CO2 anyone?

If anyone was to ask most people, which would you call the energy capital of Scotland, ninety nine percent of people would very quickly say Aberdeen, so what westminster toadie gave Glasgow a £1b energy research centre. Seeing they will have to keep running up to Aberdeen every five seconds.

Oh my.

Is carbon not the black of the moment? Spend some money on research as to how to split the C from the O2 - they have split the atom, you know.

In the meantime I shall continue to balance the macrobiotics with local produce and fair trade.

As I mentioned fair trade I recalled my first impression of it. Distrust. My local co-op was toiling to compete with Asda & Tesco on own-brand coffee and suddenly started rebranding it as fair trade.

Make your own minds up on the true facts and figures behind that. Honest move or marketing exercise?

Andrew Allen. You are way off topic.

However, as you have posted I would say that Westminster only considers Scotland as a chess board.

#49. Jock Tamson:
"However, as you have posted I would say that Westminster only considers Scotland as a chess board"

I would of thought it was Snakes & Ladders!!

P.S. Whys there so many Snakes on the board?

How whats Salad in the winter?

Aye a wee bit of lettice or cucumber might brighten up a borring sandwich BUT there other fillings that can used such hummerus & bransons pickle.

If you ask me soups the best YOU can use any veg you want to in it.

Fennel which doesn't grow in Scotland (or I don't think does) has a very anseed taste, and over powers the soup. I don't think I'll ever put a whole one in my soup pot again.

We should only buy Scottish Carrots, Neeps (turnip), Parsnips, parsley, tatties, berries (just rembered this is the expetion to what I said in comment #25).

We should import Fruits Like Oranges (high in Vit C), Bananas (folk seem o like them), Grapes (Popular) Necterns (skins not as furry as peaches) etc. We need to up our fruit & veg intake in Scotland. Surely that should be more important.

opps

Ohh stupied similair words!!!! Post #52 should start with:

Who wants Salad in the winter?

The rest seems fine to me!

Not sure if andrew allan is an example of very bad carbon, had a few too many beers and thinks (don't know if that is the right word to use for a daily record looker-at of pictures) he is on the DR site, or he is barking mad and throwing a monumental queenie strop. So far off message i could believe he's one of the american posters. Even the usual off message threads evolve with a little bit of rationality.

If only ashley was here.

Well we don't need salad in winter, that's why our anscestors invented oat cakes and whisky. you could preserve some rasps in whisky and survive the winter on cranachan, who needs salad, and i bet it would be a low carbon diet. Mind i suppose you won't be caring on a diet like that.

Air and miles springs to mind whenever I think of my neighbour's cats

#55 Jock Tamson, is it the smell or the texture, you haven't been feeding that to all you bairns have you.

I'm quite fond of a sauvignon blanc with a real cat pee aroma, lovely. Not so keen when the neighbours tom sprayed in the bathroom. Found a cold shower worked well, i think that's a lower carbon option that making them airborne, but i suppose you hvae to balance that against the pleasure you get seeing them taking flight, bless.

I am really sorry I am kind of late into this, and not really adding on something that´s been said, but:

I just think that getting back to intensive farming, going too green is counterproductive. We just have to drop some of our luxuries and we´ll be helping sustainability overall.

What I believe is a must is to use our skills to train / our excess money to fund initiatives in developing countries (not just give condoms and remain safe from a "population menace") so that they can manage to produce local / eat local (and become less dependant on us paying them 10% of the fair price for what they deserve = we'd pay locally

#4 Southern Sky, how right you are! When any nation relies on other nations to grow their food to eat, famine will surely follow.