Carbon Neutral Food

Did you know that the food we choose can make a significant impact on the environment? Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from our food systems contribute up to 34% of global emissions. These emissions arise mainly from practices like excessive soil disturbance and irrigation leading to soil erosion; chemical fertilizers and pesticides which are not only entering food chain but also polluting the water resources; and the management of supply chains and food wastage.

But there's a better way! Natural and organic farming methods prioritize the health of us and our planet. They involve gentle soil care, enriching soil with organic matter, and using inputs sourced from plants and cows. These practices naturally reduce the emissions associated with food production.
By opting for locally grown natural and organic food, you're not only making a healthier choice for yourself, but you're also taking a stand for the environment. Choosing locally sourced options minimizes emissions from transportation and reduces food waste, which together have a significant positive impact on our planet.

In a world where we're feeling the effects of global warming, each of us can play a role in climate action. By embracing locally grown natural and organic food, you're actively contributing to reducing GHG emissions and lessening your carbon footprint. It's a small change that can make a big difference for our planet's future.

What is Carbon Neutral Food?

Carbon neutrality refers to achieving a balance between the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted and the amount of GHG in carbon equivalent removed from the atmosphere. Carbon neutral food refers to net zero emissions in the food production cycle and supply chain. Net zero emissions is attained by avoiding the GHG emissions in the process and offsetting the minimal emissions occurred during the process, elsewhere.

Why Organic Tap is encouraging carbon neutral food?

In the recent years there is a spike in chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer, heart diseases etc. Build-up of chronic diseases is mainly because of the food we intake regularly. The food we consume is loaded with the nutrients required by our body, along with the residues of pesticides and other chemicals (preservatives, fruit ripeners etc.). These chemicals with the progress of time lead to inflammation of body cells and result in illness. Organic and Natural farming practices depend completely on organic onfarm inputs and avoid use of mineral fertilizers and synthetic pesticides completely. Thereby, ensuring chemical free healthy food to consumers.

Besides this in last few years India has witnessed many natural disasters, of which the main were floods at Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Western Ghats of Karnataka and North-eastern states, heat waves in many parts of the country and drought in pockets of dry zones. All these events are because of global warming and climate change. Global warming is mainly because of increase in the levels of GHG in atmosphere due to human activities in name of development, industrialisation and mechanisation. Industry, power and heat, and agriculture sectors are the major contributors of GHG, of which agriculture holds a share of 34% of GHG emissions globally. The Agro-chemicals viz., mineral fertilizers and synthetic pesticides have made their way in to food chain, which are not only building up chronic diseases in human body but also rising the earth’s temperature. However, agriculture as a system possesses a huge potential to avoid the GHG emissions and also sequester the carbon in soil pool and trees. One of the sustainable ways to grow chemical free food, reduce GHG emissions and sequester carbon is adopting principles and practices of natural and organic farming systems. This ensures healthy food for human beings, healthy environment for other living creatures and a healthy planet to our future generation.

Food being the basic need of every human being, paying attention to how our food is grown, how it is reaching our plate and how healthy it is to us and planet we can considerably reduce the GHG emissions. To leverage this opportunity and let every individual choose their food wisely we have now come up with carbon neutral natural and organic food.

How Organic Tap is making its food Carbon neutral?

At OrganicTap, we onboard the farmers who practice organic and natural farming and working towards building sustainable planet with their small footsteps. Our farmers are not dependent on any external synthetic inputs, thereby avoiding up to 50 to 60 % of GHG emissions. We as a market platform are trying to set-up a stable market place to encourage them to produce much higher quantities of carbon minimal food, making it available to our climate conscious costumers. We are further working towards sequestering the minimal carbon emissions during the process.

We are working under two major steps to deliver carbon neutral food to your doorstep.

Step 1 – GHG emission avoidance

Our farmers cultivate fruits, vegetables and food grains adopting organic and natural farming practices, thereby avoiding 50 % of GHG emissions as compared to conventional farming.

1. Tillage – With minimum tillage restricted to root zone, once in a year the GHG emissions from fossil fuel burning from various tillage operations is reduced.
2. Nutrient management – The GHG emissions from mineral fertilizers is completely ruled out on our farms. Crop nutrient requirement is taken care by cow based liquid formulations and manure. By adopting efficient methods of manure management and composting the GHG emissions are reduced.
3. Pest Management – with no use of synthetic pesticides the GHG emissions is zero. The pest incidence is naturally low owing to desi/native cultivars, seasonal production, crop diversification, crop rotation and increased population of natural enemies. If there is any incidence of insect pests or diseases, plant and cow based liquid formulations are sprayed as a control measure.
4. Water management – The crop water use efficiency is at its optimum, with soil being covered by crop residues, reducing the total water requirement of crop and hence cutting off the GHG emissions from electricity required for irrigation.
5. Harvesting and storage – only upon order we harvest the required quantity of fruits and vegetables, and deliver it within 15 hours of harvest. As there is no storage we are completely avoiding the GHG emissions, which might otherwise result from refrigeration of the produce.
6. Packing – single use plastics are totally avoided. Paper bags are used to pack vegetables like chilly, little gourd and beans. Rest of the vegetables and fruits are packed in crates, which we reuse for relatively a longer period.
7. Transportation – we procure fruits and vegetables from local farmers, by which we are reducing the distance of transportation. We are now planning to replace ICE vehicles with EV’s, which reduce the GHG emissions resulting from fossil fuel combustion.

Step 2 – Offset

Nature based carbon offset projects like – Planting of saplings of different fruit and timber species on the borders of OrganicTap Farmers farm (https://www.tapovanam.earth/nature-based-carbon-offset-project).

Role of our customers in GHG emissions avoidance

Organic Tap customers by choosing organic and natural vegetables have avoided 79.09 % of GHG emissions in the month of May – 2023.

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