Published in issue #21, Alimentation durable: Brisons nos chaînes alimentaires !
Our interview, held when we met Le Magazine les Autres Possibles (MAP to its friends), was published under this slightly provocative title. Of course, it is best to avoid packaging as much as possible and to favour local produce, but not at all costs, as we shall see here…
But first, we warmly thank the MAP for allowing us to share this piece so that as many people as possible can read this interview, ahead of a new article that also covers the subject (but let’s say no more!). If you don’t yet know the magazine, run and buy it, it’s only €2! Not much for independent journalism, is it? Like this issue (#21), it offers fine pieces on the contemporary subjects that preoccupy us. Luckily, all issues are available for sale on their website here.
Interview by Marie Bertin (Editorial Coordinator at MAP)
APALA first looked at the problem of heating, inventing the ‘Poêle Fusée à Inertie’, before developing a plant-based parmesan recipe… Did you get hungry along the way?
Not at all! Our calling is to find concrete technical solutions to environmental problems. We first analysed what the main sources of energy expenditure for an individual are: heating accounts for more than 60% of the energy consumed in France. Hence the development of a high-performance ecological masonry heater. But we quickly realised that, from the point of view of a person’s overall carbon footprint, once all production cycles are taken into account, food is the biggest contributor! It accounts for a quarter of an individual’s carbon footprint, according to the latest report from ADEME (1), the French Agency for the Environment and Energy Management. So we started working on low-tech solutions in this area: plant-based parmesan is one of them!
Is cheese a particular problem? Please reassure us…
No, but animal-based cheese is part of the wider problem of the environmental impact of foods derived from livestock farming. Our parmesan is a genuine alternative, as well as a tool for raising awareness: it serves as an example to set out and compare the carbon footprints of different types of food. For the conclusion of all our research is that, to significantly reduce the ecological footprint of our diet, plant-based foods must come first, before anything else. Zero waste, organic, local and seasonal are, of course, good and important. We also think it’s absurd to wrap a carrot in plastic. But if you compare the available data on the carbon footprints of different production chains, there is no ambiguity: even over-packaged, even coming from the other side of the world, a carrot will always have less impact than an unpackaged piece of meat, produced locally and organically.
How could a product from the other side of the world be less energy-intensive than a local one?
You need to grasp how the ‘trophic network’ works [see infographic]: the way energy flows through the different food chains. At level 1 are the autotrophs: plants, which are able to produce organic matter from nothing more than sunlight, water and minerals. Humans and animals in general are not. They belong to another level: that of the heterotrophs. We are therefore dependent on the former. Whatever we eat, plants were needed at some point in the chain: whether we eat them directly, eat animals that ate plants, or animals that ate animals that ate plants. So the higher up a food chain the link you eat, the more you ‘cost’ in energy. Let’s take an example: if you eat a carrot, water and carbon were needed to produce it. If you eat the rabbit, water and carbon were needed for the rabbit, plus the water and carbon needed to produce the carrots the rabbit ate, and so on.
Doesn’t the impact of transport reverse this relationship?
No. Contrary to popular belief, according to one of the main studies on emissions linked to the food system (2), carried out in the United States, transport accounts for only 11% of the greenhouse gas emissions of a food product. 83% is due to the production phase itself. In the case of livestock farming, this impact is mainly linked to the animals’ digestive gases, their manure, the growing and transport of their feed, deforestation, and the processing of meat and dairy products, among other things.
Should a farmed cow be put on the same footing as a hen that eats our peelings in the garden? In other words, why advocate a return to an entirely plant-based diet, without making any exceptions?
That’s true. If we rank animals, the hen is far more energy-efficient than the calf, for example. The calf is the most energy-intensive of all! That said, the hen is still more energy-intensive than any plant… That’s just how it is. Yet scientists tell us that we are currently living through the sixth mass extinction, 100 or 1,000 times faster than previous ones. We are the cause, and we do not know whether life will survive it. Point taken! It seems vital to stack every possible chance in our favour: in other words, to limit our impact as much as possible.
You rely on a great deal of figures. But in the field of impact studies, calculation methods are controversial…
Even if we criticise the studies, we can agree that the impact of an animal product outweighs that of its plant-based equivalent. For example, 100 g of plant-based parmesan made with cashew nuts produces around 60% less CO₂ equivalent than 100 g of organic, local emmental. The same goes for water consumption.
If we follow your reasoning, milk and eggs must also have a major impact. Yet you speak of plant-based eating, not veganism. Why is that?
We prefer to speak of plant-based eating because our approach to the subject is scientific, not moral. As soon as we talk about veganism, we point to the ethical debate. We are not here to dictate people’s consciences. Our research serves to compare the impacts of different foods and to inform the public. Any action inevitably has an impact. Our starting question is: when it comes to food, what level of impact is sustainable for the planet? In our view, an action is sustainable if it can be generalised: if we all did it, could the environment bear it?
Our food choices also have social consequences. What do you say to livestock farmers who defend their expertise?
We understand livestock farmers. But we think that putting the emphasis on plant-based foods is also a solution for them. In our view, the current model of livestock farming is highly wasteful: the energy expended is enormous compared with the energy produced. Livestock farming would provide only 37% of the protein and 18% of the calories we consume(3). Moreover, many farmers live below the minimum social benefit level. They have the highest suicide rate of any socio-professional category. Why would we want to carry on like this anyway? In short, to get farmers out of their situation, in my view, we need to help them make a change of direction and, why not, become processors: produce more plant proteins (pulses of all kinds) and take part in their processing.
What low-tech solutions do you propose to make it easier to change our eating habits?
We asked people: the number one obstacle for most is cooking. ‘Fine, but I don’t intend to spend hours in the kitchen, and so on.’ In other words, what we need is to relearn how to cook certain foods, and to have ideas for simple, tasty recipes! As well as developing and sharing recipes, APALA organises sustainable buffets and cooking workshops.
Find a first introduction to plant-based cooking on the back of the magazine, available here:
> #21 Alimentation durable: Brisons nos chaînes alimentaires ! <
References
(1) Barbier, C., Couturier, C., Pourouchottamin, P., Cayla, J.-M., Silvestre, M. and Pharabod, I. (2019). L’empreinte énergétique et carbone de l’alimentation en France. De la production à la consommation. Club Ingénierie Prospective Énergie et Environnement (CLIP), Iddri, with the support of ADEME. hal.inrae.fr/hal-04177325v1
(2) Weber, C. L. and Matthews, H. S. (2008). ‘Food-Miles and the Relative Climate Impacts of Food Choices in the United States’. Environmental Science & Technology, 42(10), 3508-3513. doi.org/10.1021/es702969f
(3) Poore, J. and Nemecek, T. (2018). ‘Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers’. Science, 360(6392), 987-992. doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216
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