Mooted UK air freight ban imperils African organic farmers' livelihoods

Featuring in a battle over who is to blame for climate change - poor African farmers who export their produce by air, or Western consumers who care about the environmental impact of 'food miles'- are organic cucumbers, carrots, French beans and cauliflowers.

'Who emits more greenhouse gases?' asks Kenyan farmer Charles Kimani among his avocado trees. 'A Kenyan or a Briton?' The average Briton emits 30 times more carbon than a Kenyan, according to World Bank figures - or 9.4 tonnes of CO2 compared with 0.3 tonnes. "A ban on our export market will be death for us," says Kimani, who has put his children through school and college from the profits made from his fruit and vegetables on just seven acres of land.

Behind the furore is the proposal by the UK's Soil Association (SA) to ban imports of organic produce from poor countries like Kenya because of their 'food miles' - the carbon emitted by air transport. Starting with a debate in London on July 16, the SA will hear views on the issue until
September, when it may decide to introduce a limited or total ban.

A ban would mean labelling air-freighted products so that they effectively lost their organic status due to their 'food miles.' Such a move would destroy the livelihoods of tens of thousands of smallholders across, Africa in one of the continent's most enterprising export industries, forcing them back into poverty and subsistence farming.

Organic produce is the fastest growth area of Africa's horticultural industry, together with cut flowers and other high-value products like dried herbs and essential oils. In Kenya, earnings from horticulture are second only to those from tourism. The story is much the same in Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania.

A chain of other industries from packaging to transport firms also rely on horticulture, so the knock-on effect would hit millions of jobs across the region.

The food-miles debate deepens the scepticism that many Africans already have towards Western rhetoric about ending poverty in the continent. Most farmers in upcountry Kenyan areas such as Kiambu do not look to increased aid as the way out of poverty. With a tradition of hard work and self-help, the farmers see wealth coming from access to lucrative Western markets.

"The SA proposal is just another non-tariff barrier to trade among the many that already exist," says Eustace Kiarii, head of the Kenya Organic Agriculture Network (KOAN), an organisation representing organic farmers. "Over the years we have developed an enterprising culture that should not be undermined. Farmers from developing countries are not asking for special trade access, but to be allowed to trade competitively."

Kenyan organic farmers receive not a cent in subsidies, whereas European Union farmers enjoyed some £50billion ($100 million) in aid last year. Kenyans also point out that the SA proposals, backed by UK farmers and environmentalists, are not yet based on accurate scientific data. A task force in Nairobi has commissioned a study hoping to prove the food miles lobby wrong by looking at African farming in comparison to European organic agriculture.

The food miles lobby argues that air-freighting food emits more CO2 than any other method of transportation. To fly 1kg of mangetout from Nairobi to London takes 4kg of carbon.

London's Cranfield University calculated in a recent study that growing roses in Kenya, which relies heavily on renewable energies such as solar or thermal power, and air-freighting them to Europe saved more carbon than if the flowers were grown in Holland, with its high energy costs and cold climate.

Local farmers have to work hard to gain organic certification and access to the European organic market is a long and complicated affair.

Mureithi Simba and his group of 20 smallholders at Sagana, on the verdant slopes of Mount Kenya, have been attempting to improve their farming methods to qualify as organic exporters since 2001. "For five years, we have been working on improvement of standards for certification by the SA," says Simba. "We were waiting for the SA experts to come here to certify us. If SA bans the air-freighting of our produce to the UK market, then it will have killed our effort. We will have wasted our five years, energy and the resources we have already invested in it."

The Guardian-UK