A new lens for food system debates: Fossil fuels in food

The next instalment of climate season is here as COP29 kicked off in Baku on Monday. This year, the UN conference largely revolves around climate finance but fossil fuels remain a critical focus – especially when the COP President is leveraging the event to broker oil and gas deals, as the BBC exposed last week. 

In this week’s FODDER, we’re examining fossil fuels in our food, reporting from the event Fossil fuels and food systems, a policy discussion for COP29 that was inspired by our podcast Fuel to Fork. The podcast is a deeply researched, investigative podcast with farmers, chefs, scientists and campaigners that delves into every chain of our food, exposing the fossil fuels and imagining a future without them. 

I moderated this event with an impressive panel of experts: 

• Errol Schweizer: Forbes contributor, writer of The Checkout Grocery Update, IPES-Food panel member and speaker on the Fuel to Fork podcast. 
• Ruchi Tripathi:  feminist leader and food and climate campaigner, and director of climate and nature for the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
• Nnimmo Bassey: Legendary fossil fuel activist, executive director for the Health of Mother Earth Foundation and speaker on Fuel to Fork. 
• Lili Fuhr:  Director of the fossil economy program at the Centre for International Environmental Law where she leads a team of lawyers and campaigners that focuses on petrochemicals, agrochemicals and carbon capture. 

One thing that’s stuck me in the Fuel to Fork podcast is that looking at fossil fuels in food is quite a distinct and revealing lens, compared to looking at pure emissions. It’s almost so obvious that I wondered why I had never thought about it before. 

I hope you enjoy the discussion, 

Jack Thompson, FODDER editor

First, I asked the panel what we learn by looking at fossil fuels in our food, rather than emissions. 

Lili Fuhr: “Emissions are a pretty abstract thing that most people can't grasp. Changing the perspective and talking about fossil fuels actually changes the conversation quite a bit. 

The fossil fuel industry is at the origin of a lot of these problems [in food systems]. I use the metaphor of the hydra, the monster with multiple heads, for the fossil fuel industry. 

The fossil fuel industry is using a very supply-driven market. They're creating markets to push out more [fossil fuel products]. If we're using less energy in the transport sector, as we're making headway with the energy transition, they will push out more stuff in the form of plastics, in the form of agrochemicals, fertilisers, pesticides. 

It really connected the fights for me.”

Ruchi Tripathi on connecting the fights:  “If we try to transition away from fossil fuels in the energy sector, which is what the conversation has been, we will still not address the challenge of climate change as 15% of fossil fuels are in food. We will still not address food security. We will still not address biodiversity loss. Our effort is to have a conversation on sustainable and equitable food systems transformation. 

Fossil fuels and corporate concentration are really at the heart of that.”

Nnimmo Bassey: “The [fossil fuel] industry has been extremely successful in capturing the imagination of humans. Efficient energy has to come from fossil fuels. To live a life of convenience, it must come from fossil fuels, and even our production of food. And so for me, we have to untell the story. We have to reimagine. We have to decarbonise our minds.”

One thing that surprised me is the distribution of fossil fuels throughout the food system. 

1. The most energy-intensive step is the processing and packaging of food - 42% of fossil fuel use. 
2. Retail and consumption and waste make up another 38%. 
3. This leaves farming  - farm inputs and what it takes to power farms, with the remaining 20%. Transport takes up a fraction of fossil fuel use in food systems.

This did not surprise Schweizer: 

Errol Schweizer: “Coming from the heavily industrialised North of America, working within the food industry, I see fossil fuels as the lifeblood of the food industry. They are ubiquitous from seed to shelf in terms of how food is grown, transported, processed, manufactured, and wrapped in various petrochemical-derived plastics. I still have the scent of diesel etched in my nasal cavity from having worked in so many loading bays and warehouses that it's just such an inherent part of the food system.”

The panellists had a very clear idea of what and who is to blame: 

Lili Fuhr: “I think it is corporate concentration and corporate power and the concentration of power in the hands of a few against-- in an economic model that puts profit over people and that allows for extraction and exploitation of people and nature, it is as fundamental as that.”

Errol Schweizer: “If we want to address fossil fuels, we have to address corporate concentration, concentration of ownership, and concentration of power. The reason why fossil fuels remain so ubiquitous and dominant and these solutions are so marginalised.”

Although the solutions and policy options are more challenging: 

Ruchi Tripathi: “The Global Alliance for the Future of Food is launching our new report next week really looking at the proportion of climate finance going to sustainable food systems transformation. And it's not going to come as any surprise to anyone that the percentage is quite minuscule. 

So the first message is to scale the finance towards resilient, equitable food systems.” 

Bassey, Fuhr and Schweizer warned against substituting fossil fuel products and called for a systems change. 

Errol Schweizer: “There's very little plastic right now that comes from plant-based sources. And even that is still dependent on petrochemical infrastructure. A lot of the compostable stuff is kind of a joke and really not that effective. We need to set up supply chains so that you don't have to depend on these long distance, large scale, highly centralised supply chains [that demand plastic packaging].”

Lili Fuhr on whether green ammonia (synthetic fertiliser made with renewable energy) is viable: “The only real solution is to rapidly and drastically reduce chemical inputs, regardless of whether they're fossil-based or not. And green ammonia for nitrogen fertilisers, only changes the production process, not the molecule itself. So the environmental problems associated with the use and overuse of ammonia-based fertilisers would persist. So nitrogen pollution, biodiversity loss, and 60% of the greenhouse gas emissions arise when the fertiliser is applied on the field. That wouldn't change.”

In the podcast, host Matthew Kessler explores the challenging debate around the future of synthetic fertiliser – how green ammonia has many flaws but 50% of all food is grown with synthetic fertiliser and it's not an easy transition away from them for farmers. He lays out the options in episode three of Fuel to Fork, including precision agriculture, agroecology and the low-hanging fruit of nitrogen efficiency. He asks, can we feed the world without agrochemicals? 

Finally, Nnimmo Bassey said: “We need a whole series of transitions, including transitions in the food systems. We need transitions in the economy, in everything. In one phrase, what we need is system change, not a tinkering of one part of it.” 

You can watch the recording of the session here. 

Matthew Kessler speaks to award-winning climate journalist Amy Westervelt in her podcast Drilled about Fuel to Fork, how food does not get enough attention in fossil fuel debates, and why it’s remained hidden for so long. You can listen here. 

Fuel to Fork is powered by TABLE, IPES-Food and Global Alliance for the Future of Food. 

A question for you: Is it more important to look at emissions in food systems or fossil fuel use? 

Let me know @ jackthompson@tabledebates.org