Africa "needs voice" in airfreight row

Ecologist Bill Vorley has urged policy-makers to show some “guts” and start working with African growers to give them a voice in the airfreight row.

More than 1.5 million people in Africa are dependent on airfreighting fresh produce, but the mode of transport has been subject to plenty of criticism in recent years for its carbon footprint.

Vorley, ecologist for the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said: “Policy-makers must have the guts to realise we can’t shop our way to sustainability. We need to stop doing things for Africa and start working with Africa to get their voice on to our agenda.”

A recent report into food distribution by the Food Ethics Council (FEC) revealed that airfreighted fresh produce accounts for fives times fewer emissions than alcohol and 25 times fewer than meat and dairy products.

Tom MacMillan, executive director at the FEC, said: “Reducing airfreight is much more risky than expansion. We need to look at scheduling loads to fit into the plane more efficiently.”

MacMillan said that the biggest emissions problem came from emergency airfreight generated by supermarkets demanding food at short notice, which could be negated by better planning.

Anthony Pile, chairman of Blue Skies Holdings, also spoke at the workshop on the ‘Fair Miles’ debate. “All of our airfreighted produce goes in passenger planes and I believe this is the future. Our farmers can’t understand why [their livelihood] is suddenly being put at risk,” he said.

Blue Skies Holdings supplies 12 European retailers with fruit grown in eastern Ghana. It is responsible for 1.5 per cent of all of Ghana’s exports and refuses to use expatriates to run its overseas business, preferring local links.

Blue Skies is also involved in Caretrace, an organisation set up to connect customers with farmers whereby shoppers can trace products back to their growers by exploring maps, watching videos, reading blogs and browsing photo galleries online.

Simon Derrick of Blue Skies Holdings told freshinfo: “We’re introducing a new brand, Ackwaaba [the Ghanaian for ‘Welcome’] to be used on our juice and fresh-cut fruit to continue to develop the links between what customers see and what the food’s origins are.”