Some six years have passed since the release of former US vice president Al Gore’s widely acclaimed An Inconvenient Truth – a film that put sustainability firmly on the agenda by raising awareness of climate change and the fact that we are all responsible for it.

Finally, global warming was no longer a subject reserved for left-wing activists and Friends of the Earth; it became a topic that penetrated the global consciousness and influenced political agendas, from Costa Rica to Australia. Reducing carbon emissions became a priority for companies large and small and the concept of ‘food miles’ became an even more talked-about subject in the farming industry.

Take smoothie producer Innocent, a company with an extensive and constantly evolving sustainability strategy. Suppliers are chosen partly on their eco-credentials, but given that the company imports fruit from all over the world – from sources as diverse as plantations, co-operative groups, small family farms and the Amazon rainforest – this means there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to buying responsibly. There is, however, a set of minimum standards covering environment and social issues for suppliers not already certified by schemes like the Rainforest Alliance.

Creating greater water and energy efficiency, reducing waste production and recycling are all key to the company’s eco strategy, as is reducing food miles, which is why fruit is imported by land or sea rather than airfreight – at least the fruit bought from European growers. Some ingredients, like mangoes and passion fruit, are the exception. However, in a recent audit, it was found that food miles contribute less than 20 per cent of Innocent’s overall carbon footprint, and that the greatest reductions could instead be made in areas like packaging and bottling. With that in mind, the company has included recycled plastic in its bottles since 2003, and went on to change to 100 per cent Forest Stewardship Council-certified material for all smoothie cartons.

Potato and vegetable supplier Greenvale has been a trailblazer for environmental sustainability through its Cascade water-saving system, and it has added to that this year by investing £1.7 million in a move aimed at reducing water wastage by 100m litres. The company applied the Cascade eco root vegetable washing system at its Floods Ferry site in Cambridgeshire, adding to a similar one in use at its Tern Hill site in Shropshire.

It is all part of a plan to slash water usage by 80 per cent and energy costs of chilling the water by 50 per cent. The system is also said to deliver substantial product quality and plant hygiene improvements, and backs up other company pledges to reduce carbon emissions and eliminate landfill waste by 2015.

Another UK company striving to cut down its carbon emissions is fresh cherry importer J O Sims, which recently decided to green its coldstore refrigeration as it accounted for 80 per cent of the energy being consumed on site. Following the installation of liquid-pressure amplification and inverter-speed control of the condenser fans, improvements in refrigeration efficiency allowed coldstore temperatures to be recovered more quickly, while energy consumption dropped by 48 per cent – an annual cost reduction of £10,000 and 79 fewer tonnes of carbon emitted every year.

Operations director Darren Crook explains: “It’s about maintaining a sustainable business with minimal impact on the environment. I think we should all be more proactive in this respect.”

The company’s remaining systems have now also been modified with similar results.

All commendable measures, but the question is: do companies need to look at a whole new way of farming? Caroline Drummond, chief executive of LEAF, thinks so and points to integrated farm management (IFM) as an approach that combines the best of traditional farming methods with the very latest innovations and new technology. “Often issues are delivered as isolated issues but on a day-to-day basis you are always looking to the impact of one aspect on another,” she says. “One of the real benefits of IFM is the fact that it brings together the traditional farming techniques such as crop rotation, good soil management and cultural control with modern methods like precision farming, yield mapping, some of the diagnostics that are starting to come through and other innovations like spot spraying.”

Taking into account that any production method has to be site-specific and support the integration of the environment, society and the farm’s economic viability long term, sustainable farming is a constantly evolving goal, says Drummond, and describes IFM as a way to move towards it. “It provides the framework to allow a certain amount of flexibility to continuously move forward with new technologies and identifying new issues such as water management.”

As an example she mentions regional sustainable drainage projects in Somerset, Cambridgeshire, Herefordshire and Wales, where farmers have been looking at areas that are at risk of either flooding or erosion. A number of low-cost solutions like field buffers and silt traps made a great difference, and there are now more farmers nationwide looking to implement these techniques.

Some 20 per cent of UK horticulture is now LEAF-marque certified, balancing the need to grow production with the need to enhance the environment, the water and soil quality and protecting biodiversity. It’s a complex interaction, not least with unpredictable weather conditions. While acknowledging that as a society we are living beyond our means in terms of the planet’s resources, Drummond is optimistic that at least UK farming will manage to become fully sustainable in the foreseeable future. “Farmers face these issues every single day and are always taking steps to ensure they are helping to protect our natural resources. Growers are innovative, practical and quick to adopt change where it is available. So from a farming industry perspective I’m very hopeful we will have positive change for the future.” —

A CALL FOR GLOBAL ACTION

At the opening of the 2012 UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar, which ended last week, president Abdullah Bin Hamad Al-Attiyah called for global action on climate change.

“Now more than ever, the issues at the heart of these negotiations are at the forefront of global debate and discourse,” he said. “All seven billion people living on the planet share a single challenge: climate change. If we do not make the changes we need to now, it will soon be too late. We must decide whether we let our lifestyles jeopardise our life.”

UK energy and climate change secretary Edward Davey echoed these sentiments and called for stricter European legislation. “The EU has led the way in calling for more ambition and in enshrining emissions reductions in law. I want to encourage it to move to a more ambitious 2020 emissions reduction target of 30 per cent,” he said.