One particular fruit that’s beloved by Brits is destroying the environment so refuse to eat them, says the gardening expert
TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh has said avocados should be ditched to save the planet due to their huge environmental impact.
Writing a letter to The Times in response to the number of injuries occurring when removing the stone, he said: “There is a simple solution… don’t eat them.
The 75-year-old’s opposition stems from the symbol of clean eating – which has soared in popularity lately thanks to brunch dishes such as smashed avocado on toast – link the climate crisis.
He wrote: “Most of those sold in the UK are grown where the rainforest has been felled at an alarming rate to accommodate them. They need huge and often scarce supplies of water. They are then shipped to our shores, often more than 5,000 miles across an ocean, as breakfast for supposedly environmentally friendly consumers.”
He added: “There’s a lot to be said for Cornflakes, Weetabix and Shreddies.”
An avocado has a carbon footprint five times higher than a banana. Each avocado requires 320 litres of water to grow – putting strain on drought stricken producers like Mexico and South Africa – more than twice the amount needed to grow an apple.
The Sustainable Food Trust said: “Despite bold claims that avocados are a clean and sustainable superfood, the reality is that avocados have serious environmental consequences.”
Author of Avocado Anxiety: The Impact of What we Eat, Louise Gray, investigated foods we put in our shopping baskets as farming and food production are responsible for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions. She found that the carbon footprint of avocados shipped from Peru is 1.6kg of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, compared to just 0.89 kg for British-grown broad beans. Surprisingly, bananas account for only 0.7 kg because they are generally transported in bulk.
But the World Avocado Organisation claims that its footprint is on par with many of the fruits we regularly enjoy, according to a recent study on the environmental impact of different fruits. It says, a kilo of avocados generates the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as a kilo of plums, 2.4 kg CO2 equivalents. A kilo of strawberries produces 2.3 kg CO2 eq, raspberries 2.6 kg and mangoes 4.4 kg. This accounts for the total emissions across the supply chain, from farm to fork.
Meanwhile, it adds that like most plant-based foods, the carbon footprint of the avocado is substantially lower than that of most animal-based foods, like meat and dairy products. For example, the carbon footprint of a kilo of avocados is up to 25 times lower than a kilo of beef, 8 times lower than cheese, 7 times lower than chocolate and half that of olive oil.
While climate change is likely to present significant challenges to agriculture in coming decades, it could also mean that crops such as chickpeas, soybeans and oranges are widely grown across the UK, and home-produced hummus, tofu and marmalade are a common sight on our supermarket shelves by 2080.
A new study led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) in collaboration with the University of East Anglia (UEA) predicts that future warmer temperatures in this country would be suitable for a variety of produce such as oranges, chickpeas and okra that are traditionally grown in warmer parts of the world.
