Food for thought

Every year, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) encourages the international public to ‘make a promise’ to the planet as part of its Earth Hour. The initiative was introduced in 2007, and has been growing in momentum ever since, with rising levels of support.

On 24 March, individuals, businesses and communities across the globe showed their commitment to doing everything in their power to save the planet from ‘climate change, pollution and habitat devastation’. At 8:30pm, supporters simply turned their lights off for an hour, starting their journey to ‘choosing an areas of their lives where they can make a difference’, whether that’s eating more plant-based dishes or cutting energy and plastic use.

In the run-up to this year’s event, WWF warned the UK public that it was in danger of losing some of its favourite dishes as a result of the effects of climate change on the planet. Among them were chicken tikka masala, fish and chips, and even the ploughmans, the classic build-it-yourself cheeseand- pickle sandwich.

The charitable organisation published a specially commissioned report put together by 3Keel to warn of the danger. “The threat to these classic dishes just shows that climate change could impact every aspect of our lives in future if we don’t act now,” said Gareth Redmond-King, head of energy and climate at WWF, in the document. “That’s why, this Earth Hour, we want people to eat more sustainably. That doesn’t necessarily mean going vegan or vegetarian – it means each of us cutting back on the amount of fish, meat and dairy we eat. If each of us takes a small action, together we can combat climate change and future-proof our best-loved dishes.”

Although these dishes are on the endangered list, they don’t positively affect the world around us. “The cheese ploughmans was revealed to contribute more to climate change than fish and chips or chicken tikka masala,” continued the report.

In fact, creating the simple sandwich emits 2.6kg of greenhouse gases, which is equivalent to charging a smartphone 316 times, boiling a kettle 113 times or keeping an LED light bulb switched on for 28 whole days.

Ingredients Insight has focused on the aspects of the report that are most important to agriculture and food producers. The report focuses on the UK, but its findings are significant for many parts of the world.

The report

‘Food in a Warming World: the Changing Foods on a British Plate’, began by reminding readers that the past three years have been confirmed as the warmest on record, adding that food could become a key player in helping to limit climate change. “The role of the food we eat has come into the spotlight in addressing climate change, and it is now evident how much we can all do to help global efforts by adapting our diets,” it explained.

The report looked at the ingredients used in the three famous dishes already mentioned, as well as those in cawl, a famous Welsh lamb stew. It assessed the impact the ingredients had on climate change through their carbon footprint. “For comparison, one example result shows that the emissions for the ingredients and preparation of one chicken tikka masala meal are equivalent to boiling a kettle 89 times to make a cup of tea,” it stressed.

WWF identified 20 prominent risks climate change poses to these dishes, including soil losses due to erosion. The report concluded that these risks are being felt in the UK, but others were also global issues. “Example impacts include lower yields for global commodities like rice and soybeans; heat stress disrupting livestock productivity; warmer, wetter conditions leading to pest invasions and proliferations; and water shortages threatening age-old production regions.

“There is plenty of evidence that climate change is already affecting our food system. Imports of avocados, coffee and courgettes have already been squeezed, and UK farming has been battling with flooded fields and new pest problems,” it said.

WWF emphasised that the current median trajectory for climate change is a 3.2°C rise by 2100, going on to say this would be “devastating” to the most vulnerable human populations and countless ecosystems.

The ‘COP 21’ Paris Climate Change Agreement was arrived at with the aim of cutting that rise to 1.5°C over that period through reducing the levels of human-made greenhouse gasses. WWF said, globally, as much as 20% of those emissions could be the result of food and farming. “Clearly, diets have a critical role in supporting the international mission to minimise anthropogenic emissions and limit the most severe effects of climate change,” the report stated.

“Wherever food production takes place, the systems are dependent on the environment, whether wild fish caught at sea, sheep grazing on our hillsides or potatoes maturing in the soils beneath our feet,” it continued. But the publication wasn’t just looking at the impact lifestyles are having on the planet, it was also assessing the affect the changing planet is and will have on sourcing ingredients.

How the climate affects food

Climate and the food people consume have an interdependent relationship. While what is grown and eaten can contribute to climate change due to carbon footprints, the changing climate can also directly affect food production and supply.

Forecasts for climate change are extremely complex, as different conditions are predicted in various parts of the world and even across the UK. The global trend is for warmer average temperatures, with more energy in the atmosphere that increases frequency of severe events, such as droughts, heatwaves, hurricanes, flooding and tidal surges. UK projections include more precipitation in winter, spring and autumn for most regions, as well as frequent short duration, ‘extreme’ precipitation events. This is evident from Met Office reports, as December 2015 was the wettest month ever recorded, which resulted in widespread flooding. The UK also experienced heavy snowfall in December 2017 and earlier this year.

Extreme weather events have occurred historically, but with the science of event attribution, it is now possible to link the likelihood and intensity of a single weather event to climate change; for example, it has been calculated that the 2003 European heatwave, in which thousands of people died, was likely to have been a consequence of climate change.

Precisely how severe weather events affect food production depends on various factors, including the type of crop, timing, location and local vulnerability. The ultimate impact on food supply also depends on factors such as global trade, particularly if there are simultaneous supply issues elsewhere in the world that can be unrelated.

What will climate change mean for the future of iconic UK dishes? It is impossible to predict exact outcomes, and what will happen, especially where and when, but there is definitely evidence to support climate change putting beloved foods at risk, based on recent events and threats from the future conditions that are expected to be the consequence of human-made climate change.

Coping with new conditions

If we look at the consequences of climate change on the UK’s production, there may be some effects – including warmer temperatures leading to longer growing seasons and elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration – that could even increase crop fertility and average yields in the short term. It is also the case that, when facing adversity, humans don’t ‘stand still’ but innovate to respond to changing weather conditions. Producers, for example, can take a far more proactive approach and adapt in order to buffer the impact of climate change. They could select crop varieties that are resilient to extreme conditions, erecting hail nets, installing irrigation systems and so on.

However, despite these uncertainties and the population’s ability to respond, the prospect of unpredictable, extreme events still pose significant threats to the food system. This is because adaptation measures often carry significant additional costs, and many climatic events will either be less predictable or of a large enough scale to overwhelm even the very best defences. For example, protracted droughts, tidal surges or new species of pests can devastate food production, irrespective of prior preparation.

People need to be prepared for impacts to the food system, which could include:

• degradation and loss of land from agricultural production, particularly in exporter countries
• financial pressures on the supply chain – particularly farmers – in the wake of severe events
• fluctuations in the quality of ingredients, as producers cope with suboptimal conditions
• temporary periods of unavailability of ingredients on supermarket shelves
• higher cost of ingredients and meals for consumers.

What does it mean?

Clearly, based on what we already know and the WWF report, climate change will continue to affect the supply of foods. Unfortunately, the impact will be most dramatic on the less developed parts of the world. The results on populations of exceptional weather have already been witnessed; the sad truth is that such issues will continue to be faced, perhaps with growing frequency and devastation.

The WWF’s report, based on the impact on Western populations, sheds new light on the threats everyone faces. Climate change does not discriminate; developed countries have, so far, been able to cope better than those with inadequate infrastructure. However, as the effects become more severe, the ability to mitigate, or at least manage, will be tested.

To see a copy of the full report, visit www.wwf.org.uk.