Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury, has been directing attention recently to environmental issues and our responsibility to reduce our ‘footprint.’ One of his suggestions (in a recent interview with The Times) could take a serious toll on the livelihood of many African farmers:

He said that the carbon footprint of peas from Kenya and other airfreighted food was too high and families should not assume that all types of food would be available through the year.

As James MacGregor points out in The Guardian today:

Stopping this trade would make hardly any impact on climate change but would harm over one million people in sub-Saharan Africa who depend on it for their livelihoods, and to pay for healthcare and the education of their children, girls in particular.

He adds that:

Air-freighted fruit and vegetables contribute less than one-tenth of one percent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

This is one of the great tensions between international development and environmental sustainability.

It’s no recent news, but the EU, China and the USA provide their farmers with subsidies which allow them to compete in a world market. These subsidies mean that the farmers can charge far less for their produce than they are actually worth. Any surpluses are then dumped on developing markets at a much lower price than local farmers can afford.

Are we to continue with these structural injustices and at the same time cut back on consumer spending on African produce?

(Source: The Guardian Online, The Times. Image: Steve Punter)

Time reports that in Kenya a seed that was recommended by scientists and the government as an ideal Biofuel for growth in arid areas is actually heavily dependent on water.

“Convinced they could reap large profits from the plant in the global craze for alternative energy sources, hundreds of farmers turned over acres of their small farms to jatropha. But it didn’t take them long to realize what scientists have come to realize in recent months: what was once touted as a miracle plant that needed almost no water has turned out to be anything but that.”

Read full article here.