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The future’s orange

LAST week, the world’s first carbon-neutral carrots were launched by a group of 10 Nottinghamshire farmers; they are now being supplied to supermarkets, restaurants and other food outlets across the country.

Formed in 1998 and with land totalling some 20,000 acres, cooperative Freshgro has pioneered the return to the UK of Chantenay carrots—which fell out of favour from the 1960s—and is now the world’s leading supplier. Between them, the farms cover more than 90% of the UK market for the variety—increasingly popular as they don’t need to be peeled. The latest 2021/22 crop has arrived with an impressively low carbon footprint of 0.03grams of CO₂ per kilogram of carrots (calculated from greenhouse-gas emissions of 363 tons of carbon equivalent (CO₂e) from production and harvesting of 12,500 tons of carrots). For perspective, the average carbon footprint for a kilogram of bananas is 0.7kgCO₂e, eggs 4.5kgCO₂e, milk 3kgCO₂e and beef 60kgCO2e.

‘We’ve been working on this for a decade and a lot of it is simple common sense,’ explains