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The contribution of food to global warming doesn’t stop at the farm gate. More than 30 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe are estimated to come from the food and drink sector. In the UK the food chain contributes more than one in every five tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.

Much of the food on our supermarket shelves has travelled the world, some of it ‘air-freighted for freshness’, some by ship – and almost all of it by road. A piece of beef can travel 12,000 miles just to reach the UK shops. Ninety per cent of the fruit we eat and 40 per cent of our veg are imported into the UK. Air freight has the highest emissions of carbon dioxide per tonne of food – and is being used more and more.

Even food from the UK tends to be well-travelled. The average potato’s journey starts at the farm, goes by lorry to a factory or warehouse for packaging and is then taken by lorry to a centralised warehouse before distribution to the stores. One in four heavy goods lorries on UK roads are transporting food, clocking up 5.5 million food miles in 2004. That’s the equivalent of one potato travelling 220 times around the Earth. But on average, lorries are only just over half full. More efficient distribution could greatly reduce the impact of food miles.

Focusing only on food miles ignores the fact that producing and processing food accounts for around 14 per cent of energy consumption by UK businesses; and food, drink and tobacco manufacturers consume more energy than is used in iron and steel production. Keeping food cool contributes to the emissions total: fresh food, especially meat, is stored and transported in refrigerated containers that produce greenhouse gases.

Globally, food production contributes around 30 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, half of which come from methane. And to think that on average we throw away around a third of the food we buy – where, left to rot in a landfill, it generates yet more methane.