From Paul Lovatt-Smith
Bijal Trivedi’s article on the high carbon footprint of food (13 September, p 28) is a good illustration of the one of the problems caused by one particular farming system – modern intensive agriculture – but as her limited data from organic farming hints, to conclude that all farming systems have such high footprints would be a big mistake.
I did some rough calculations for my own smallholding in the south of England, run along traditional/organic lines. These indicate that our beef has much less than one-tenth, probably closer to one-fiftieth of the footprint of the intensively farmed North American steak mentioned in the article.
Meat production is a key part of most traditional/organic systems, in which grazing animals are a necessity in order to maintain fertility through crop rotation. Methane is also produced by micro-organisms in soil from plant decay; are not cows just replacing that process?
Hailsham, East Sussex, UK
