Eco Friendly labelling

Chris F

Staff Member
Media
Location
Hammerwich
I was at the London Agritech conference yesterday and one of the speakers was from Foundation Earth and they have developed an environmental rating label.

The aim is to create a more sustainable food system and reward farmers that are most sustainable. The calc includes the whole supply chain to get food to the shelf. So includes up and downstream of the farm itself. Including any processing and transport. This is not just a carbon calc - it includes things like water.

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The main problem at the moment, is that the farming part all uses averages to create a footprint. And the farming part is about 1/3 of the overall eco footprint. Thus the accuracy is way off. I believe this is a worldwide average, not even a UK one. So you can imagine how bad red meats fair at the moment when they factor in land use changes in developing parts of the world!

However, they want to make the rating more accurate over time. To do this, they need to know more about what actually happens on farm. Not just carbon, water usage and overall sustainability. The aim being that farms can get their own eco rating, that then contributes to an overall eco rating of the product. The better the eco rating, the more valuable your sales are.

Given how good UK (and irish) farming is compared to that being imported this could offer us a unique advantage and even a premium. This is a worldwide system, not like Red Tractor that is just UK. So would allow direct comparison to imports.

What are your thoughts - the label is coming regardless!
 

tepapa

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Wales
If a food shortage does occur in the near future, it'll be worthless what the sticker says but it will penalise the the lower end of society that perhaps can't afford the "greener" options. How did they get this past the human rights brigade by creating emotional stigma to those that can't afford to eat reduced carbon food.
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
question is does it take into account the 'consumption' of the people invovled in running that business producing that food example, the guy and his family who lives on a shoestring with just basic needs covered as compared to the high consuming people invovled inrunning another buisness producing same food but buys fancys cars for hima nd misses and holidays abroad ,flying on ariplanes sort of thing :unsure:
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
I was at the London Agritech conference yesterday and one of the speakers was from Foundation Earth and they have developed an environmental rating label.

The aim is to create a more sustainable food system and reward farmers that are most sustainable. The calc includes the whole supply chain to get food to the shelf. So includes up and downstream of the farm itself. Including any processing and transport. This is not just a carbon calc - it includes things like water.

View attachment 1030834

The main problem at the moment, is that the farming part all uses averages to create a footprint. And the farming part is about 1/3 of the overall eco footprint. Thus the accuracy is way off. I believe this is a worldwide average, not even a UK one. So you can imagine how bad red meats fair at the moment when they factor in land use changes in developing parts of the world!

However, they want to make the rating more accurate over time. To do this, they need to know more about what actually happens on farm. Not just carbon, water usage and overall sustainability. The aim being that farms can get their own eco rating, that then contributes to an overall eco rating of the product. The better the eco rating, the more valuable your sales are.

Given how good UK (and irish) farming is compared to that being imported this could offer us a unique advantage and even a premium. This is a worldwide system, not like Red Tractor that is just UK. So would allow direct comparison to imports.

What are your thoughts - the label is coming regardless!

As relevant to consumers as calorie counts on a restaurant menu

Flagellate me now with a stick of celery for no doubt our farm is Eco G
 

Swarfmonkey

Member
Location
Hampshire
A quick look at who "Foundation Earth" are and whose involved with it and my alarm bell is going off. An "industry advisory group" stuffed full of reps from Big Food (Unilever, PepsiCo, Nestle), the supermarkets (Sainsbury's, M&S, Co-op, Lidl, Morrisons, Waitrose) and the odd lunatic (that financial incompetent Moron Toft Bech from Meatless Farm).

The real giveaway that it's complete bollox can be found in one single sentence on their website: The Foundation’s pilot launch in Autumn 2021 will use a farm to shelf methodology developed using data from the academic paper Poore & Nemecek (2018). Yup, the serial data cheery-pickers and manipulators Poore & Nemecek. Oh, and Poore doesn't just have a passive role in this. He's actively involved in it, working on their "scientific committee".

Now, this where it gets odd. Three days ago on Companies House the first gazette notice for compulsory strike-off was listed for this company.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
A quick look at who "Foundation Earth" are and whose involved with it and my alarm bell is going off. An "industry advisory group" stuffed full of reps from Big Food (Unilever, PepsiCo, Nestle), the supermarkets (Sainsbury's, M&S, Co-op, Lidl, Morrisons, Waitrose) and the odd lunatic (that financial incompetent Moron Toft Bech from Meatless Farm).

The real giveaway that it's complete bollox can be found in one single sentence on their website: The Foundation’s pilot launch in Autumn 2021 will use a farm to shelf methodology developed using data from the academic paper Poore & Nemecek (2018). Yup, the serial data cheery-pickers and manipulators Poore & Nemecek. Oh, and Poore doesn't just have a passive role in this. He's actively involved in it, working on their "scientific committee".

Now, this where it gets odd. Three days ago on Companies House the first gazette notice for compulsory strike-off was listed for this company.
I was about to post that it’s just yet nother marketing gimmick that syphons money to some who already have enough money. But the involvement of Poore has made me doubt the very future of humanity…..
 

delilah

Member
Not quite sure why you’re laughing. I’m starting to think he’s gonna have a similar effect on mankind as Ancel Keys.

And that’s not a good thing, for those who don’t know who he is….

I guess I was laughing at the fact that one muppet is managing single handedly to run rings round an entire industry. How sh!t does that make us ?
 

Chris F

Staff Member
Media
Location
Hammerwich
As relevant to consumers as calorie counts on a restaurant menu

Flagellate me now with a stick of celery for no doubt our farm is Eco G

I can guarantee to you are G right now. As you are assumed to have the same footprint as a south American farmer who has created land use change to do his farming. But if you assessed your actual farm, I don't think you would be.

Regarding it being marketing, it is, but this is what consumers are asking for and it does give UK produced meat an advantage over imported meat. In my opinion.

At the moment, it's pointless as it doesn't differentiate between farms.
 

delilah

Member
I can guarantee to you are G right now. As you are assumed to have the same footprint as a south American farmer who has created land use change to do his farming. But if you assessed your actual farm, I don't think you would be.

Regarding it being marketing, it is, but this is what consumers are asking for and it does give UK produced meat an advantage over imported meat. In my opinion.

At the moment, it's pointless as it doesn't differentiate between farms.

1) It pitches farmer against farmer.
2) It perpetuates the lie that the environmental damage in the food chain is being caused our side of the gate.

How many more reasons do we need to utterly reject it ?
 

Chris F

Staff Member
Media
Location
Hammerwich
How many consumers are asking for it?

Well - who knows is the real answer "but in studies 60% of consumers want to know more about how eco friendly their food is".

As with all food surveys, go to Waitrose and get a different answer to Iceland. The shoppers at farmers market probably the most, but that's why the shop at a farmers market as they know is the best tasting low impact food. That food is sold at a premium already though.
 

Chris F

Staff Member
Media
Location
Hammerwich
1) It pitches farmer against farmer.
2) It perpetuates the lie that the environmental damage in the food chain is being caused our side of the gate.

How many more reasons do we need to utterly reject it ?

1) farmers sell a product - you are competing with farmers in this country and abroad already.
2) this scheme measures post farm gate and pre farm gate. But it measure them accurately. Farming is the only bit that is estimated and averaged.

Regarding point 2, this is where the food is 30% of the footprint comes from. You are spot on. 10% is from land use changes - irrelevant to UK Farming. 10% is from actual farming (but seems to ignore all the sequestration), 10% is from pre- and post farm gate, packaging, cold storage, transport, stores etc.
 

tepapa

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Wales
Someone really does have it in for the Scottish farmers in the Highlands and Islands. Their actual farming would be very low input but all supplies and products will come up and down the country on a lorry so regardless of how green it is to produce it has a carbon footprint getting it market, which is probably greater than 30,000 tones coming half way across the world by sea.

Well I suppose they can always plant Caithness and Sutherland in trees. Who needs peat bogs anyway.
 
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delilah

Member
1) farmers sell a product - you are competing with farmers in this country and abroad already.
2) this scheme measures post farm gate and pre farm gate. But it measure them accurately. Farming is the only bit that is estimated and averaged.

Regarding point 2, this is where the food is 30% of the footprint comes from. You are spot on. 10% is from land use changes - irrelevant to UK Farming. 10% is from actual farming (but seems to ignore all the sequestration), 10% is from pre- and post farm gate, packaging, cold storage, transport, stores etc.

I can guarantee you here and now that if this thing sees the light of day it will give the impression that the damage, the blame and the responsibility for reparation lies with the farmer.
It is greenwash for the cartel, so that they can include it in the annual report for shareholders and use it to tell Government to back off whilst carrying on regardless.
Only an idiotic industry would allow itself to be used in this way.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.2%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.8%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.0%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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