This article follows a speech I made on May 23, 2024 at the annual university catering conference. The 940 restaurants of the so-called “Crous” serve 35 million meals per year (including nearly 20 million at the symbolic price of €1!)).
Agriculture is seriously threatened by climate change…
It is obvious to say that what we serve in the canteen has been previously produced by farmers, breeders and fishermen! However, these are precisely the sectors that will be most threatened by the planet’s problems: warming, decline in biodiversitybiodiversityresource depletion, etc., as I detailed in my articles onagricultureagriculture victim of warming, or at the end of fishingfishing.
… Restaurateurs will have to change certain suppliers
Concretely, France is somehow cut in two by a border line which goes from Bordeaux to Grenoble via Nîmes. South of this line, whatever happens, we will produce less… A little less certainly, but local producers will no longer be able to regularly ensure their deliveries in the same quantities, and it will be necessary to find other suppliers further south. north. But if we go further south, the drops in production risk being drastic.
Spain for example, or Morocco, major suppliers of fruit and vegetables for all of Europe, will no longer be able to ensure this function sustainably, and one day it will be necessary to return to the tomatotomato or to cucumbercucumber from the west of France, if the market gardenersmarket gardeners of these regions know how to seize these opportunities. Closer to us, a department is already in a critical situation: the Pyrénées-Orientales, whose rain regime in recent years has become close to that of the Sahel. It is unfortunately likely that in a few years there will no longer be any orchards around Perpignan and that peaches and vegetables will have to be produced elsewhere. apricotsapricots… In mattermatter viticulture, there are reasons to doubt the permanence of wine production in Sicily, but new competitors are setting up in England and Denmark!
Likewise, the rise in ocean waters, combined with the violence of the rains, will sooner or later neutralize areas currently devoted to agriculture. We too, in France, are going to have our climate refugees along some of our coasts, in Aquitaine, Pays de la Loire, Normandy, Nord-Pas-de-Calais or Languedoc.
Agriculture is also a sector that emits a lot of greenhouse gases…
But that’s not all, not only will farmers have to find the means to continue producing despite global warming, but we cannot neglect the fact that this sector is also a major emitter of greenhouse gasgreenhouse gas, as I detailed in my file “Agriculture causes global warming. Nearly a quarter of our broadcastsbroadcasts comes from our plate. There, the main choice consists of changing our menus, and in particular significantly reducing our consumption of beef and dairy products. Indeed, as I detailed in the file “Do cows threaten our climate future”, each cowcow warms the planet as much as carcarbut there are 1.7 billion of them on Earth!
…Restaurateurs will have to choose foods that warm the planet less
The solution in this area lies mainly in the evolution of the menus of our restaurants, all of which are addicted to meat and dairy products. Skip from “beef carrotscarrots » to “beef carrots”, serve red meat less often, favor yogurt with cream (which consumes 10 times more milk), return more often to vegetable proteins, and make real efforts in gastronomy vegetarianvegetarian…so many essentials.
It will also be important to understand that, contrary to what many people think, the “local” has little influence on the quantity of greenhouse gases. In this regard, except in the case of transport by plane, the conditions of production and conservation of food weigh much more than the final transport. Two examples: apples are harvested in September and October, and they are served all year round in canteens. From April, apples from Chile that passed through the Panama Canal released less greenhouse gas than those from Normandy that spent six months in cold storage.
Likewise, the leg of lamb from New Zealand, arrived frozen by boat, from an animal raised 365 days a year – in full airair on natural meadows – warms the planet less than that of Limousin which spends five months a year locked in the sheepfold eating food, much of it purchased.
It is expected that in the near future, there will no longer be a single collective restaurant that does not display the greenhouse gas weight of its daily menu on a daily basis. The elements to calculate it are currently being developed, as I detailed in my file on “The label revolution for better eating”.
For restaurateurs, the “Bon pour le climat” association, for example, puts its “eco-calculator” online which allows you to calculate a CO equivalent weight.2 of a menu by entering each ingredient and the preparation method. We can bet that university restaurants will have to move more quickly than others in this direction, given the great sensitivity of their users to these issues of global warming…
Agriculture is also a solution to global warming…
But that’s not all: not only should we warm the planet less, but we also need to… cool it! For this, agriculture also has a role to play in resuming the carbon dioxidecarbon dioxide of the’atmosphereatmosphere and bury his carboncarbon in the soil, as I detailed in my file “Agriculture, a solution to global warming”.
How do we cool the planet? We plant trees and hedgeshedgeswe stop plowing, we cover the soil permanently, we plant legumes which naturally capture thenitrogennitrogen air and make it possible to do without very harmful nitrogen fertilizers, etc.
And there, it is no longer a question of classifying the different foods in relation to each other, but the different agricultural operations. Because for example the wheatwheat does not have a single greenhouse gas weight; there is indeed wheat and wheat. Questions, for example, to ask yourself on this subject are:
- Are there hedges around the field?
- Was it plowed or not?
- Was it irrigated or not?
- What plant rotations preceded cultivation?
- Has wheat been combined with legumes?
In the case of milk, it is important to know how much of what the cow ate was produced on site, how many months she spent on a meadow, whether there are hedges around the meadow , if she ate foods that reduce her methane emissions, etc.
…Restaurateurs will have to choose suppliers who cool the planet
It is therefore not the product as such that we should label, but the farm and the farmer! We are starting to be able to do this with the appearance of the low-carbon label.
In short, hello complexity! But if we want society to move, school canteens and university restaurants should be at the forefront of innovations on this subject, they should no longer source their supplies “as they have always done” and prioritize inventing this future. more desirable that future generations have the greatest need for!
Will we see parent associations demanding both that the price of a canteen ticket is not too high and that we eat local food that does not warm the planet? And will we see municipalities and universities proudly announcing during their assessment: “here, our canteens have stopped warming the planet”?
