Win a book - "Food Pharmacy" how to reduce your Environmental impact.

Win a book - "Food Pharmacy"  

A guide to help you reduce your Environmental impact.

Researchers at Oxford University and the Swiss agricultural research institute, Agroscope, have created a database on the environmental impacts of nearly 40,000 farms, and 1,600 processors, packaging types, and retailers. 

They can show that "Two things that look the same in the shops can have extremely different impacts on the planet." They found large differences in environmental impact between producers of the same product. As example high-impact beef producers create up to 50 times greater impact than low-impact beef producers.  Another example is one pint of beer can create 3 times more emissions and use 4 times more land than another. This variation in impacts is observed across all indicators they assess, including water use, eutrophication, and acidification.

The researchers present evidence in favour of using new technology which provides recommendations on how to reduce impacts and increase productivity. Still producers have limits on how far they can reduce their impacts. For example do animal products have higher impacts than vegetable equivalents and a low-impact litre of cow’s milk uses almost two times as much land and creates almost double the emissions as an average litre of soymilk.

To change your diet at least one day a week has impact as animal product free diets, deliver greater environmental benefits than purchasing sustainable meat or dairy. Further, without major changes in technology that disproportionately target animal products, the researchers show that animal product free diets are likely to deliver greater environmental benefits than changing production practices both today and in the future.

The researchers point on the need for defining "Environmental labels" and Financial incentives to support a more sustainable consumption. If people in general would change to a only plant-based diets this can reduce food’s emissions by up to 73%. This reduction is in greenhouse gas, freshwater but also farmland. To reduce farmland would take pressure off the world’s tropical forests and maybe even release land back to nature.

Important is that also small behavioural changes done by many humans will have large consequences for the environment. 

Win a book - "Food Pharmacy"  

Send me an e-mail before 26 September 12:00.

In the newsletter the 27 September the winner will be announced.
Write a few words to describe why you are interested in this topic and dont forget name and phone number. The book is in Swedish by Swedish authors. Read about the author Ann Fernholm on her blog annfernholm.se. The official blog www.foodpharmacy.se.

Send the e-mail to em(@)sbn.no (take brackets out)

At the SBN Conference we have a keynote speaker on the need for defining "KPIs and Environmental labels" which will lead to Financial incentives to support a more sustainable consumption. In addition there are in many presentations a tuch in on the topic. The most important change is ongoing. We are changing, our minds have started to reflect environment and trust in most of the decisions we make. We will ask all our presenters to say someting about the day-to-day initiatives they make in their presentations.