South Africa’s fruit and wine industries recently launched a cross-industry project designed to address the issue of climate change and the impact that it has on doing business, both locally and internationally.
The project - Confronting Climate Change: Developing a comprehensive response to climate change for the South African fruit and wine industries - is to unveil its first introductory report on the topic, to inform producers and suppliers of its aims.
The research project was launched in Pretoria’s fresh produce market on July 7. UK ministers David Miliband, secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, and Gareth Thomas, permanent under-secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform, and international development, attended the event.
Confronting the realities of climate change is a real and universal challenge. The quest to lower the carbon intensity of doing business and the emergence of carbon as a tradable commodity has significant implications for the South African fruit export industry. These include the perception of food miles, the comparative ‘carbon footprint’ of competing countries, the impact of climate change at a regional level and the opportunity for carbon offset projects.
A successful response to the climate change challenge thus demands a concerted and synchronised response at the industry or “South Africa - country of origin” level. There is currently no single reputable information resource on these complex issues available to industry leaders, decision-makers and stakeholders, and there has been a proliferation of ‘carbon calculators’ being developed, making it difficult to compare ‘apples with apples’. There is, therefore, an urgent need to have a carbon calculator that is compliant with one accepted international Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) standard that is comparable, both internally within each industry and externally between the relevant industries.
The Regional Standards Programme (RSP) of the ComMark Trust is the major funder of the carbon footprint research project. The RSP is funded by the UK’s department for international development, DFID, to help the South African Development Community (SADC) countries and firms meet international food quality and safety standards for agri-business products. The initiative is also being funded by the South African National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC) and the Post-Harvest Innovation Fund of the department of science and technology.
From the South African fruit and wine industries, funding has been secured from South African Table Grapes, South African Apple and Pear Producers’ Association, South African Stone Fruit Producers’ Association, Citrus Research International, SA Subtropical Growers’ Association and Winetech.
The project will be co-ordinated by the South African Deciduous Fruit Producers’ Trust research division and will be managed by a steering committee made up of the funders and key experts. Hugh Campbell, general manager of the South African Deciduous Fruit Producers’ Trust research division, says: “This proactive initiative by the fruit and wine industries will provide us with valuable information regarding climate change and how these industries can work towards carbon neutrality.”
Norma Tregurtha, manager for the ComMark Trust’s Regional Standards Programme, adds: “Access to markets is certainly not guaranteed by the best trade agreements as barriers to trade, such as correct standardisation can stifle the process. In order to facilitate trade from southern African countries, we need to ensure that producers have and are able to comply with international standards.”
The study is being undertaken by Genesis Analytics, an economic development advisory group that is based in South Africa and works throughout Africa. The group’s Tony Knowles is the group leader of the carbon footprint study. “This initiative has its origins in the demand from UK supermarkets such as Tesco and Marks & Spencer for the fruit and wine production sectors to address the issue of carbon emissions,” he explains. “It became apparent that the entire supply chain associated with the South African fruit and wine industry needed a common auditing methodology or benchmarking standard in order to measure emissions and develop an appropriate strategy going forward. Various industry-scale bodies and the government therefore became involved and launched this initiative.”
The project has three stages and the first aspect will establish a standard methodology for carbon footprinting throughout both the fruit and wine industries. “In the absence of this, various sectors within these industries are using different criteria to measure their emissions so the current data is sometimes ambiguous - we are not necessarily comparing apples with apples,” says Knowles. “We plan to create a set benchmarking standard that can be used by all role players in these industries to provide exact and useful industry data regarding emissions.”
The second aspect of the project will involve an in-depth international study of climate change mitigation and adaptation in the fruit and wine sectors elsewhere. This will look at how these activities are marketed - for instance the advertising of carbon neutrality - and which interventions are being used elsewhere to cut emissions. The combination of the first two aspects will assist with the third stage, which will be to develop a strategy for the South African fruit and wine industry. “The aim is certainly not to be prescriptive, but to provide the strategy and advice required by South African farmers and exporters to appropriately implement climate change mitigation and adaptation programmes going forward,” explains Knowles. “Part of the project is making the greenhouse gas footprinting methodology available through a very user-friendly, web-based portal. This is an inexpensive method of dissemination and makes it easier for all producers, including South Africa’s emerging farmers, to access this information. This will also be interactive, allowing producers to input their information to the site, as well as access general information on climate change strategies within the fruit and wine sector.”
South African fruit exporter Colors Fruit has been innovative on this front and has initiated a carbon emission-measuring project among its producers. This is based on the standards of the UK’s Carbon Trust, a government-funded independent company that helps businesses and the public sector to cut carbon emissions.
UK REDOUBLES COMMITMENT
More than 90 per cent of the fruit and almost 40 per cent of the vegetables eaten in the UK are imported and customers spend more than £1 million a day on fruit and vegetables from Africa.
The£200,000 carbon footprint research scheme, jointly funded by the UK’s department for international development (DFID) and the fruit and wineIndustry in South Africa, will measure the carbon footprint of the industry and establish how the industry’s carbon emissionscompare to international competitors. This will then be used to address howthe industry can become carbon neutral, to secure jobs and increase demand for South African produce in a sector crucial for the employment of the poor.
DFIDannounced in February that it is doubling its commitment to £1.2m to expand Fairtrade labelling across Europe and to help producers in the poorest countries around the world.
